#2
Well, it is easier for parents to get all the Fulla stuff than the Barbie stuff.
No Corvette. No pet dog. No silly stuff like Fulla becoming an astronaut, or president, or...any kind of career. No glittering party dresses. Nothing for traveling all over the world. No foreign devil friends.
Just a chador, a hijab, and a full face veil, and you are set!
#7
I want one! Then///no wait this is too easy. Lets wait till the muzzie Ken doll is out. Oh I forgot, they are all in heaven with their virgins and goats. This is way to easy.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
01/17/2006 15:55 Comments ||
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#8
One problem with the doll. It has boobs. Muhammad set the example of boning 6 year olds as wives so this one is way to old for the average Muhammadian Koranic pedophile for Allah.
At least they can buy her. Now that is something the moon god Islamics are used too doing
African civil society groups yesterday urged the AU not to elect Sudanese President Omar Bashir to head the 53-member body, arguing his governmentâs role in the conflict in the troubled western Darfur region should make him ineligible. Representatives of nearly 40 African non-governmental organizations dealing with human rights, health issues and conflict resolution said Bashirâs selection to lead the pan-African body would destroy its international credibility and crater ongoing AU-mediated Darfur peace talks.
Despite Sudanâs widely criticized human rights record and the roles Khartoum and its proxy militia are accused of playing in rampant atrocities in Darfur, AU leaders are expected next week to consider Bashir for the presidency of the bloc, currently held by Nigeriaâs Olesegun Obasanjo. The groups did not offer an opinion as to who the next AU chief should be but noted the key role Obasanjo has played thus far in shepherding the Darfur peace talks in Abuja.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/17/2006 00:00 ||
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#1
Sudan's Bashir as head of the AU does seem a bit unwise, under the circumstances.
#6
Maybe even some of those gold braid shoulder ropes with little pointy things on the ends. If his epaulets were any bigger he'd go airborne in moderate winds.
Darfur's main rebel group yesterday rejected Khartoum's offer to deploy joint forces alongside African Union troops to curb the violence in the war-torn region of western Sudan. "The Sudan Liberation Movement rejects the Sudanese government's proposal ... and insists on the deployment of an international force," the rebel group said in a statement. The Sudanese Foreign Ministry had said that it proposed during a meeting in Addis Ababa of the African Union's Peace and Security Council the deployment of a tripartite force comprising troops from the government, the rebel movements and the AU.
The move by Khartoum came after it rejected a proposal by the United Nations to send its own troops to Darfur to replace an AU contingent which has struggled to quell the bloodshed. Sudan has expressed its satisfaction with the performance of AU peacekeepers and urged the international community to come forward with the funds for the contingent to continue its mission.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/17/2006 00:00 ||
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Scotland Yard Tuesday held a 27-year-old man in the attempted July 21 London bombings on suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of an act of terrorism. A police spokesman said the suspect was taken to central London for questioning, and searches were underway at two "residential premises and one business premises in West London.
#2
The cardinal error is made by those who insist on fighting a war as if it was a police matter. These individuals are of the mind that an army should never, ever be used, and that the police and courts can deal with any conceivable domestic threat.
A submarine captain accused of bullying his officers told a court martial yesterday that some were so inexperienced it was like having lower division footballers on a Premiership pitch. Capt Robert Tarrant, 44, who was commander of the nuclear submarine Talent, told a court martial that he expected the very highest standards from his crew. He said he used a leadership style he had learned serving in the Falklands conflict. "I discovered that the margin of error between operational safety and therefore operational success and operational disaster was pretty small," he said. "From my perspective it came down to having the very highest standards of operational capability that one could have at all times. I learned that if you were trying to train during an operation it is too late. In the Falklands we had a captain who had served in the Korean war and because he was an excellent leader we got through and we did well."
The court martial, at HMS Nelson, Portsmouth, has heard that Capt Tarrant went red in the face with fury during "rants" at his officers, some of whom were reduced to tears. Three of five allegations of ill-treatment were withdrawn at the end of the prosecution case because of a lack of evidence.
Officers do not blubber. They may occasionally want to, but they do not blubber.
Tarrant, who now has a Whitehall desk job, said that he had been happy with the crew he inherited when he took over as captain of Talent but was concerned that some new arrivals lacked experience. "My assessment was that it was going to be like taking a footballer from the third division and in six or seven weeks them playing in the Premier league."
He vigorously defended himself against the remaining charges of bullying two officers, Lt Cdr Ryan Ramsey and Lt James Carrick.
When asked about Lt Cdr Ramsey he described him as "an improving watch leader with a long way to go". But when asked about Lt Carrick he said he had not wanted to take him out on operations. Capt Tarrant said: "He was a very junior officer who seemed in harbour to me to sail very close to the wind. I did call into question his officer-like qualities and I did not want him to come on to the patrol but because of the dearth of anyone else available I was told that he had to."
Parts of the court martial are being heard in private because of the sensitive nature of Talent's operations at the time of the alleged offences. The hearing continues.
#2
When I was studying law, and Mr. Hupenter here was writing his stories, and you, Willie, were tearing up the playing fields of dear old Princeton, who was standing guard over this fat, dumb, happy country of ours, eh? Not us. Oh, no! We knew you couldn't make any money in the service. So who did the dirty work for us? Tarrant did! And a lot of other guys, tough, sharp guys who didn't crack up like Tarrant.
#3
Good Lord! Have these people not read the Horatio Hornblower stories? If the officers can't handle a little shouting during drills, how would they survive being shot at -- let alone keeping their crew steady?
#4
In his book about submarines Tom Clancy (he writes documntary books about military in addition to fiction) tells that despite inferior technology British submarines were more feared than American ones by the bad guys due to the quality of their captains. The selection process is absolutely brutal and involves an exam where several surface
combattants are charging the submarine from all around it. If the appliant fails he will not given a second chance: he will never command a submarine. While the standards for non-captains aren't and don't need to be as high a submarine is no place for sissies who can be reduced to tears by rants however brutal.
I don't know if this guy is merely a demandiong officer or a modern Captain Bligh (more exactly: not the real Captain Bligh but the Captain Bligh depicted in the "Bounty" movie with Charles Laughton and Clark Gable) but I know for sure that those officers have no place in submarines and the people who validated them have no place in the Navy.
#5
JFM,
I had the same thought you did re: Clancy's sub book. The course is called 'Perisher'.
It's indeed possible that in this case an oddball somehow got through the system - it's happened a LOT in the USN (Google 'The Arnheiter Affair', and then read it all the way through) and USAF. But the comments from the junior officers in this case sound a bit...well, whiny.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
01/17/2006 11:56 Comments ||
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#6
All I can say is that I would never admit that a CO made me cry...
Posted by: Mark E. ||
01/17/2006 14:56 Comments ||
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#1
"Give me a break," said T.J. Bonner, a 27-year Border Patrol veteran who heads the National Border Patrol Council. "Intrusions by the Mexican military to protect drug loads happen all the time and represent a significant threat to the agents.
Whats all the fuss about, they seldom go north of Des Moines? New Orleans Mayor Fox Says God Wants City US To Be Mostly Black hispanic.
#3
eLarson
Interesting point. If a US civilian saw a Mexican Army regular on our side of the border and shot him, can he be charged with murder or would it be considered defending the Homeland? Would it be any different if the american shot a known AQ terrorist or Iranian/Syrian sabatouer?
Posted by: Yosemite Sam ||
01/17/2006 15:42 Comments ||
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#4
"There's right and there's wrong. You gotta do one or the other. You do the one, and you're living. You do the other, and you may be walking around, but you're as dead as a beaver hat." John Wayne to his Tennessee volunteers in 'THE ALAMO'
#5
Can you say bounty? Offer $40 per set of donkey tags and I'm willing to bet we might see a couple locals fix this problem. Because gwad only knows the democraps and repubs will not.
It makes you wonder how many contacts the Muslim terrorist have with the Mexican military.
BISHKEK - Kyrgyzstan is seeking to sharply increase, to 50 million dollars (41.4 million euros) a year, the amount the United States pays for an airbase supporting its troops in Afghanistan, parliament speaker Omurbek Tekebayev said late Monday.
The fees for the 1,000-hectare (2,500-acre) Manas airbase should now be paid only to the Kyrgyz state, at a rate of five to six dollars per square metre, Tekebayev said. âAll the money coming from the airbase must go into the state budget,â he said. Under the current complicated system, the land on which the airbase is located is controled by several entities, which charge anything between three cents and four dollars per square meter.
Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev said last month that Washington should pay âtens of times moreâ for use of the airbase. Bakiyev earlier raised environmental concerns as a reason to âreviewâ the rent paid by America for use of the base.
I guess we'll suck it up and pay it for now, but Bakiyev ought to remember what finally happened to Ferdinand Marcos.
Last year US forces were evicted from a base in another ex-Soviet republic in Central Asia, Uzbekistan, which was set up to support operations in Afghanistan after the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States. The eviction has forced the Americans to rely more heavily on the base in Kyrgyzstan.
Top US officials including Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited Kyrgystan and other Central Asian states several times last year, though Washington has denied it is looking for a new base in the region.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/17/2006 00:05 ||
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#1
This is $20,000 per acre per year. I can *buy* land in Montana for less than that. Much less. My feeling is that we should either secure a lower price or get out of Dodge.
#2
Residential land costs over $10 million an acre in parts of California. Reflects the three primary factors in real estste pricing, location, location and location.
#3
NS: Residential land costs over $10 million an acre in parts of California. Reflects the three primary factors in real estste pricing, location, location and location.
Kirghizstan ain't California. It ain't even Montana. On the other hand, the Russians used to pay $200m for their Cuban base and $300m for their naval base in Vietnam. I guess $50m is in the ballpark.
#4
I have approved the $ 50m for Krygekistem. The billpayer will be the National Endowment for the Arts, and deductions from federally funded university and college research grants.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Il arrived at a deluxe bordello in Beijing on Tuesday for talks with President Hu Jintao on resuming six-nation talks aimed at ending the North's nuclear development, South Korean media reported. A 40-car convoy believed to be carrying the North Korean leader and scores of toothsome hookers arrived Tuesday morning at a government guesthouse in Beijing, the Yonhap News Agency reported, citing unidentified witnesses and diplomatic sources.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan said he couldn't confirm whether Kim was in the country, though he said Hu planned to meet with at least one foreign leader over the next two days. China usually announces visits by the secretive Kim only after he is on his way home. Kim, who rarely ventures abroad, is believed to have crossed into China a week ago, with foreign reporters pursuing him every step of the way. It was his first known trip to his regime's only major ally since 2004. He also made a pair of visits to China in 2001. Kim spent nearly a week in the heart of China's booming south, touring high-tech companies in a possible search for ideas to revive his country's laggard economy, according to South Korean and Hong Kong media.
Pro-Beijing newspapers in Hong Kong reported Monday that Kim's armored train left the southern city of Shenzhen near Hong Kong late Sunday for Beijing and a meeting with Hu. According to Yonhap, Kim's train stopped at a station outside Beijing and he was driven into the capital. The United States has urged Beijing to use its influence to convince Pyongyang to return to the six-party talks. They began in 2003 after the North admitted having nuclear weapons. The talks have been stalled since November, with Pyongyang accusing the United States of a hostile attitude. The talks also include Russia, Japan and South Korea.
Posted by: Steve ||
01/17/2006 07:46 ||
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A BRAWL has broken out over suggestions the NSW Government has been too politically correct to arrest the people responsible for revenge attacks in the wake of the Cronulla riot.
NSW Opposition Leader Peter Debnam yesterday repeated his attack on the Iemma Government for being soft on ethnic crime and criticised police for failing to arrest people of Middle Eastern descent.
Premier Morris Iemma denied telling police to go soft on people of Middle Eastern descent and responded angrily to the comments.
Inspecting the state's new anti-riot squad, Mr Iemma promised a crackdown on antisocial and riotous behaviour.
"We're on the side of the police in this, he's (Mr Debnam) not. The hooligans and thugs have got no respect. No wonder, when the example is being set by the Leader of the Opposition," Mr Iemma said.
Mr Debnam's comments last week that the NSW Government had been soft on ethnic crime for the past 10 years prompted Mr Iemma's outburst and criticism from police Commissioner Ken Moroney.
"The statistics would suggest the Government is simply not putting the resources into rounding up these Middle Eastern criminals and thugs. The Labor Party seems to be indebted to certain ethnic groups," Mr Debnam said last week. Yesterday, he refused to back down. "Thugs on the streets of Sydney that should be in jail. That's the issue."
Mr Debnam said the Government was too "politically correct" to act against ethnic gangs. "The community wants these people locked up and I'm going to keep raising this issue every day until those couple of hundred Middle Eastern thugs are behind bars."
Police have charged 20 people with offences relating to the December 11 Cronulla riot, during which people of Middle Eastern descent were chased and attacked.
Middle Eastern youths carried out violent revenge attacks at Cronulla, Maroubra and Brighton-le-Sands in response to the riot.
Hadi Khawaja, 24, of Peakhurst, was last week jailed for three months for burning an Australian flag stolen from the Brighton RSL Club.
#1
Police have charged 20 people with offences relating to the December 11 Cronulla riot, during which people of Middle Eastern descent were chased and attacked.
Middle Eastern youths carried out violent revenge attacks at Cronulla, Maroubra and Brighton-le-Sands in response to the riot.
Hadi Khawaja, 24, of Peakhurst, was last week jailed for three months for burning an Australian flag stolen from the Brighton RSL Club.
NB: One person with a Middle Eastern name arrested, for arson, petty theft, or vandalism. In the wake of the Cronulla riot, one church was burnt down, another had its Christmas services interrupted by gun-wielding thugs making threats, and in other instances, Lebanese thugs were seen openly carrying guns.
Furthermore, if anything was a "revenge attack", it was the Cronulla riot. The people were sick of being assaulted and abused by Muslims at the beach, then watching the police do nothing at all about it. There's no doubt that the people who committed violent acts should be punished, but that should apply equally.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
01/17/2006 8:00 Comments ||
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#4
The language thingy is ok. Brussels is a French-speaking commune, and to speak Dutch/Flemish there is to mark yourself as an outsider. However, if she wants to be able to communicate with her non-voting constituency, she'd better learn English post-haste; else, she'll never be able to explain to the various alphabet organizations where they're to meet her for lunch. (Food in Brussels is considerably better, and more voluminous, than in France; a gourmand's paradise. Belgium is the kind of country where meat inspectors are murdered regularly for noticing that the animals have been treated with hormones for tenderness.)
"...The Muslim influence on Belgian politics has tangible consequences. Secretary Kir wants to demolish the monument commemorating the 1915 Turkish genocide of 1.5 million Armenian Christian civilians. According to Kir, who is responsible for public monuments, the âso-called Armenian genocideâ is a hoax, concocted by âimperialists.â..."
PP Euro-MP Carlos Iturgaiz yesterday asked the European Parliament to denounce the assembly to be held on Thursday by banned ETA-front party Batasuna. Iturgaiz called on the Zapatero administration "to strictly carry out" the Political Parties Act, under which Batasuna was banned, saying that the assembly "would be a true scandal," similar to what would happen if the Nazis held a meeting in Germany or Al Qaeda in New York. Meanwhile, the state prosecutor's office yesterday filed a motion with the Audencia Nacional, Spain's highest court, to prohibit the Batasuna assembly.
On the floor of the Europarliament in Strasbourg, Iturgaiz stressed that Batasuna "is the political branch and the cradle of ETA, and it is banned in Spain and on the European Union list of terrorist organizations. If Batasuna holds its assembly on Thursday, it would be a direct attack on the freedoms and laws of a member of the European Union, which would be democratically unworthy for Spain, a submission to the plans of the Batasuna-ETA terrorists, and, above all, the betrayal of the victims of terrorism and an insult to their memory."
Iturgaiz continued, "The terrorists are trying to break the law again and, during these days, once again there are statements from the Basque regional nationalist government and from the Socialist government of the nation that amount to putting out the red carpet for these terrorists to parade down with no problems." Iturgaiz declared that the European Parliament "has to raise its voice and denounce this assembly in the strict enforcement of the Political Parties Act."
Socialist Euro-MP Ines Ayala defended judicial powers, and responded to Iturgaiz that "the prosecutor and the judge will decide whether to authorize the assembly, and in Spain the justice system is independent." She addressed parliamentary chair Josep Borrell, saying that the European Parliament "has always decidedly supported peace processes that eradicate violence through a democratic process, and we hope it will continue in that line."
Meanwhile, the state prosecutor's office said yesterday that it would ask judge Fernando Grande Marlaska to stop the assembly, called by Batasuna for January 21.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/17/2006 00:47 ||
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Prostrating himself and touching his forehead to the ground, Mathieu Pawlak put his demons to rest.
Once a practicing Catholic tormented by a spiritual void and the searching questions of youth, Pawlak embraced Islam and, he says, found peace.
"I'm the same on the outside, but inside everything has changed," said the 25-year-old restaurant cook who converted 4 1/2 years ago. He took a Muslim name, Abderrahman, and last year married a Muslim woman who cloaks herself in a dark veil.
"I found the way that Muslims pray to be truly profound. It links the body and the heart," said Pawlak during an interview at his home in this southern Paris suburb, where a large Muslim population lives.
Pawlak is one of about 50,000 French, and tens of thousands of others across Europe and North America, who have converted to the Muslim faith. Like most converts, he is a mainstream Muslim.
But intelligence services are tracking a disturbing new phenomenon: A growing number of Westerners are giving their hearts to radical Islam and some may try to prove themselves through jihad, or holy war.
Muriel Degauque, a 38-year-old Belgian woman who blew herself up in a suicide attack in Iraq in November embodies those fears, as does another convert, Richard Reid, the so-called shoe-bomber who tried to blow up a trans-Atlantic flight in 2001.
"This phenomenon is in full expansion," Pascal Mailhos, head of the French intelligence service Renseignements Generaux, recently told the daily Le Monde. Some 1,600 converted Muslims follow the rigorous Salafist brand of Islam that breeds today's radicals - out of about 5,000 Salafists in France, he said.
Converts are seen as potentially naive, malleable and zealous in their newfound faith, easy prey for radicals. Some came to Islam for the succor that society denied them, others for revenge, experts say - stressing that such scenarios apply to a small but worrisome fringe group.
The path to Islam often starts with marriage to a Muslim or contact with the faith through Muslim friends - Pawlak's case. Others convert as part of an existential search. But prisons inmates, and people at loggerheads with society, may also take refuge in Islam.
"Islam has become the religion of the oppressed," said Farhad Khosrokhavar, a sociologist who has written books on conversions in prison and on suicide bombers.
"Nowadays, Islam is a kind of ideal means to express discontent with society and the Western world in general," he said.
The ease with which one can convert makes Islam an accessible refuge. One need only recite the "Shahada," a prayer that provides an attestation of faith, before two witnesses.
"It can be done in a cafe," said Abdelhak Eddouk, a prayer leader in Grigny, south of Paris.
The ability of the converts to blend into Western society augments the potential for danger. "They can move from one country to another and have a kind of multiple identity," Khosrokhavar said.
Pawlak and a friend, Christophe Weiss, 23, who, like him, converted to Islam, shake their heads at such notions. They ascribe any radicalization to ignorance of the Muslim faith or immaturity - or a case of mistaken identity.
"Some people will say we are extremists because we pray five times a day," said Weiss, a nursing student.
Like other Muslims interviewed, they see fingerpointing as a new attack on their faith.
"If one is troubled from the start, he will remain troubled," said Zuhair Mahmood, director of the European Institute of Human Sciences, a training center for imams, or prayer leaders, run by the fundamentalist Union of Islamic Organizations of France.
However, authorities say the danger is real.
The Dutch government, in a Dec. 2 letter to parliament, said that "various Dutch converts are experiencing a radicalization process."
French intelligence is so concerned it conducted a detailed survey of 1,610 Muslim converts who were active preachers, delinquents or had ties to radicals, according to Le Monde. The survey last June concluded that 3 percent of the converts "belong to or are in the circle of the movement of Islamist combatants," the newspaper wrote.
At least three Muslim converts in France have been convicted in recent years on terror-related charges, the most recent Lionel Dumont, given a 30-year prison term last month. He was co-leader of a gang of violent hoodlums in the northern city of Roubaix that provided Ahmed Ressam, the so-called millennium bomber, with his start in terrorism. Dumont later fought for the Muslim cause in Bosnia.
Several Muslim converts are being prosecuted in the U.S.-led war on terror. American-born Taliban fighter John Walker Lindh is serving a 20-year prison sentence in the United States.
In France, only several dozen converts are "potentially violent," said Jean-Luc Marret of the Strategic Research Foundation, a think-tank.
But one Islamic Internet site where al-Qaida has posted claims recently carried a chilling portrait of "the future al-Qaida soldier" - a secretly converted Muslim "born in Europe of European and Christian parents. They studied in your schools, they prayed in your churches" and now swear "to take up arms after their brothers."
For Marret, the real danger lies elsewhere: "The proselytism network across the street, in jail, in universities, in suspect mosques, in companies, this is real."
There is no simple reason to explain why even a tiny minority of converts radicalize, Marret said.
"Why do we fall in love? It's the same," he said. "Why does one become a terrorist? We can cite political, historic, ethnic, family reasons and we will have simplified reality."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/17/2006 00:57 ||
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#1
"Islam has become the religion of the oppressed," said Farhad Khosrokhavar, a sociologist who has written books on conversions in prison and on suicide bombers.
LMAO ! He's as confused as the simpletons he's trying to write about
If Islam is taking away the likes of Richard Reid and Muriel Degauque , then thats fine by me .... If they all club together maybe their accumulative IQ may reach zero , if they are lucky ...
I remember a story in my local Sunday News Mag right after 9/11 about a local all-American Catholic school college boy who converted to Sunni Islam.
He spewed the usual party line bilge about Islam's "peace" and how misunderstood it is, etc. The thing that really summed up the story and the perversity of what he had done was that since his conversion, he avoids any contact with the family dog that he had grown up with.
#9
Actually, according to an old Twilight Zone episode, the way to tell if the Devil is trying to trick you into Hell is the fact that he won't let your dog in. So, no dog means you are not headed towards Heaven. Always wondered if that is why Mo made dogs so unclean for the Muslims.
Former Vice President Al Gore's assertion that President Bush "repeatedly and persistently" broke the law by eavesdropping on Americans without a court warrant did not fall on deaf ears in Washington, D.C. In fact, the Republican National Committee swiftly reacted to the loser of the 2000 presidential election, with RNC press secretary Tracey Schmitt stating: "Al Gore's incessant need to insert himself in the headline of the day is almost as glaring as his lack of understanding of the threats facing America. While the president works to protect Americans from terrorists, Democrats deliver no solutions of their own, only diatribes laden with inaccuracies and anger."
The RNC then showed why Gore's comments are hard to swallow, providing these insightful reminders:
Once Upon A Time, Gore Talked Tough About Cracking Down On Terrorists:
In 1999, Vice President Gore Declared: "Hear Me Well - We Will Fight The Reckless Violence Of Terrorism And We Will Never Yield To Terrorism, Ever." (Joe Carroll, "Clinton Exhorts Parties to Surmount Last Hurdle," The Irish Times, 3/18/99)
At A 1996 Counter-Terrorism Event Gore Said: "The Bottom Line Is That President Clinton And I And The Members Of This Commission Have Pledged To The Families Of The Victims Of Terrorism That We're Going To Take The Strongest Measures Possible To Reduce The Risk Of Another Tragedy In The Future." (Al Gore, White House Briefing, 9/5/96)
Clinton/Gore Administration Used Warrantless Searches:
Clinton Administration Deputy Attorney General Jamie S. Gorelick: "(T)he Department Of Justice Believes, And The Case Law Supports, That The President Has Inherent Authority To Conduct Warrantless Physical Searches For Foreign Intelligence Purposes And That The President May, As Has Been Done, Delegate This Authority To The Attorney General." (Deputy Attorney General Jamie S. Gorelick, Permanent Select Committee On Intelligence, U.S. House Of Representatives, Testimony, 7/14/94)
In 1994, President Clinton Expanded The Use Of Warrantless Searches To Entirely Domestic Situations With No Foreign Intelligence Value Whatsoever. In A Radio Address Promoting A Crime- Fighting Bill, Mr. Clinton Discussed A New Policy To Conduct Warrantless Searches In Highly Violent Public Housing Projects." (Charles Hurt, "'Warrantless' Searches Not Unprecedented," The Washington Times, 12/22/05)
"One Of The Most Famous Examples Of Warrantless Searches In Recent Years Was The Investigation Of CIA Official Aldrich H. Ames, Who Ultimately Pleaded Guilty To Spying For The Former Soviet Union. That Case Was Largely Built Upon Secret Searches Of Ames' Home And Office In 1993, Conducted Without Federal Warrants." (Charles Hurt, "'Warrantless' Searches Not Unprecedented," The Washington Times, 12/22/05)
President Bill Clinton: "(T)he Attorney General Is Authorized To Approve Physical Searches, Without A Court Order, To Acquire Foreign Intelligence Information For Periods Of Up To One Year ..." (President Bill Clinton, Executive Order 12949, "Foreign Intelligence Physical Searches," 2/9/95)
Meanwhile, Polling Shows Americans Support President Bush's Decision On Wire Tapping:
"(A Rasmussen Reports Survey Found) Sixty-Four Percent (64 percent) Of Americans Believe The National Security Agency (NSA) Should Be Allowed To Intercept Telephone Conversations Between Terrorism Suspects In Other Countries And People Living In The United States ⊠Just 23 percent Disagree." (Rasmussen Reports' Web site, http://www.rasmussenreports.com, Accessed 1/6/06)
Eighty-One Percent (81 percent) Of Republicans Believe The NSA Should Be Allowed To Listen In On Conversations Between Terror Suspects And People Living In The United States. That View Is Shared By 51 percent Of Democrats ..." (Rasmussen Reports' Web site, http://www.rasmussenreports.com, Accessed 1/6/06)
The FISA Court Does Not Provide Flexibility Needed To Fight The War On Terrorism:
President Bush: "(T)he (9/11) Commission Criticized Our Nation's Inability To Uncover Links Between Terrorists Here At Home And Terrorists Abroad. Two Of The Terrorist Hijackers Who Flew A Jet Into The Pentagon, Nawaf Al Hamzi And Khalid Al Mihdhar, Communicated While They Were In The United States To Other Members Of Al Qaeda Who Were Overseas." (President Bush, Radio Address, Washington, D.C., 12/17/05)
9/11 Commission Report: "On January 15, (2000) Hazmi And Mihdhar Arrived In Los Angeles. ... After The Pair Cleared Immigration And Customs At Los Angeles International Airport, We Do Not Know Where They Went. ... We Do Not Pick Up Their Trail Until February 1, 2000 ..." ("Final Report Of The National Commission On Terrorist Attacks Upon The United States," The 9/11 Commission Report, 7/22/04)
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales: "The Operators Out At NSA Tell Me That We Don't Have The Speed And The Agility That We Need, In All Circumstances, To Deal With This New Kind Of Enemy. You Have To Remember That FISA Was Passed By The Congress In 1978. There Have Been Tremendous Advances In Technology ... Since Then." (Attorney General Gonzales, Press Conference, 12/19/05)
The Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol: "Remember Moussaoui? Remember August 2001? The FBI Wanted To Go To The FISA Court To Get Surveillance Capabilities Based On What They Found On His Computer, And The Justice Department Decided No. Now, The Patriot Act Did Not Change That Standard Of FISA ..." (Fox News' "Fox News Sunday," 12/18/05)
Kristol: "I Wish Bill Clinton Had Done This. I Wish We Had Tapped The Phones Of The People Of Mohammed Atta Here Into The United States If We Discovered Phone Calls From Afghanistan To Him. That Was Why 9/11 Happened. That's What Connecting The Dots Is." (Fox News' "Fox News Sunday," 12/18/05)
9/11 Commission Report: "The Agents In Minnesota Were Concerned That The U.S. Attorney's Office In Minneapolis Would Find Insufficient Probable Cause Of A Crime To Obtain A Criminal Warrant To Search Moussaoui's Laptop Computer. Agents At FBI Headquarters Believed There Was Insufficient Probable Cause. Minneapolis Therefore Sought A Special Warrant Under The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act To Conduct The Search ... FBI Headquarters Did Not Believe This Was Good Enough, And Its National Security Law Unit Declined To Submit A FISA Application." ("Final Report Of The National Commission On Terrorist Attacks Upon The United States," The 9/11 Commission Report, 7/22/04)
Bush Administration's Wiretapping Authorization Has Been Successful:
"Officials Have Privately Credited The Eavesdropping With The Apprehension Of Lyman Faris, A Truck Driver Who Pleaded Guilty In 2003 To Planning To Blow Up The Brooklyn Bridge." (Peter Baker, "President Says He Ordered NSA Domestic Spying," The Washington Post, 12/18/05)
Posted by: Steve ||
01/17/2006 10:03 ||
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#1
Al-Gore's gone through his various post-Florida 2000 stages:
1. Bearded visiting prof look at Columbia U.
2. Fat-boy, puttin' on dem pounds look.
3. Comedic appearances on Letterman where he left the crowd in stitches (NOT!).
4. Various appearance before MOVE-ON.org-sponsored events.
5. And now in his most demented stage at the DAR Constitution Hall.
Next month, Al-Gore hooks up with Mayor Ray "Chocolate" Nagin to tour America.
Vanderbilt Law School Dropout Albert A. Gore Jr., accused President Bush of breaking the law when, in the wake of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, the president authorized wiretapping on international phone calls of terrorist suspects.
Before making another wild accusation against the man who defeated him in the 2000 presidential election, Gore should perhaps have consulted individuals who, unlike him, actually graduated from law school and studied the laws in question. Over at Powerline, one such attorney, John Hinderaker, analyzed the presidentâs program and surveyed the applicable law and found âunder the Constitution and all controlling precedents, the NSA intercept program is legal.â In his update to that post, he provides a link to the Justice Department rationale upon which President Bush relied. (Unlike Mr. Gore, those who wrote that opinion graduated from law school.)
And itâs not just a conservative attorney like Mr. Hinderaker who has found the presidentâs program to be legal. As we have reported before, John Schmidt, associate attorney general in the Clinton Administration, in which Mr. Gore also served (but in a different capacity) found that the president had the legal authority to OK the wiretaps. Another left-of-center attorney to sign off on the presidentâs plan was Cass Sunstein, one of the nationâs most respected constitutional scholars.
Before accusing his erstwhile adversary of breaking the law, this disgruntled Democrat should have consulted with those who actually graduated from law school. And perhaps he should also consult with graduates of another type of professional school so he might finally get over his loss to President Bush now over five years ago.
UPDATE: Back in the day when he was working for Bill Clinton, Gore didnât claim that his boss and his appointees were violating the law when they defended similar eavesdropping. Gateway Pundit provides comments supporting such programs from law school graduates. (Via: Glenn (who thinks Iâm a meanie).)
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/17/2006 10:41 Comments ||
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#3
In fact, the Republican National Committee swiftly reacted to the loser of the 2000 presidential election, with..
Gotta give credit to these guys - it looks like they're learning that mounting a prompt challenge is the best response when the opposition decides to dispense bullshit.
In the anxious months after the Sept. 11 attacks, the National Security Agency began sending a steady stream of telephone numbers, e-mail addresses and names to the F.B.I. in search of terrorists. The stream soon became a flood, requiring hundreds of agents to check out thousands of tips a month.
But virtually all of them, current and former officials say, led to dead ends or innocent Americans.
F.B.I. officials repeatedly complained to the spy agency that the unfiltered information was swamping investigators. The spy agency was collecting much of the data by eavesdropping on some Americans' international communications and conducting computer searches of phone and Internet traffic. Some F.B.I. officials and prosecutors also thought the checks, which sometimes involved interviews by agents, were pointless intrusions on Americans' privacy.
As the bureau was running down those leads, its director, Robert S. Mueller III, raised concerns about the legal rationale for a program of eavesdropping without warrants, one government official said. Mr. Mueller asked senior administration officials about "whether the program had a proper legal foundation," but deferred to Justice Department legal opinions, the official said.
President Bush has characterized the eavesdropping program as a "vital tool" against terrorism; Vice President Dick Cheney has said it has saved "thousands of lives."
But the results of the program look very different to some officials charged with tracking terrorism in the United States. More than a dozen current and former law enforcement and counterterrorism officials, including some in the small circle who knew of the secret program and how it played out at the F.B.I., said the torrent of tips led them to few potential terrorists inside the country they did not know of from other sources and diverted agents from counterterrorism work they viewed as more productive.
"We'd chase a number, find it's a schoolteacher with no indication they've ever been involved in international terrorism - case closed," said one former F.B.I. official, who was aware of the program and the data it generated for the bureau. "After you get a thousand numbers and not one is turning up anything, you get some frustration."
Intelligence officials disagree with any characterization of the program's results as modest, said Judith A. Emmel, a spokeswoman for the office of the director of national intelligence. Ms. Emmel cited a statement at a briefing last month by Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the country's second-ranking intelligence official and the director of the N.S.A. when the program was started.
"I can say unequivocally that we have gotten information through this program that would not otherwise have been available," General Hayden said. The White House and the F.B.I. declined to comment on the program or its results.
The differing views of the value of the N.S.A.'s foray into intelligence-gathering in the United States may reflect both bureaucratic rivalry and a culture clash. The N.S.A., an intelligence agency, routinely collects huge amounts of data from across the globe that may yield only tiny nuggets of useful information; the F.B.I., while charged with fighting terrorism, retains the traditions of a law enforcement agency more focused on solving crimes.
"It isn't at all surprising to me that people not accustomed to doing this would say, 'Boy, this is an awful lot of work to get a tiny bit of information,' " said Adm. Bobby R. Inman, a former N.S.A. director. "But the rejoinder to that is, Have you got anything better?"
Several of the law enforcement officials acknowledged that they might not know of arrests or intelligence activities overseas that grew out of the domestic spying program. And because the program was a closely guarded secret, its role in specific cases may have been disguised or hidden even from key investigators.
Still, the comments on the N.S.A. program from the law enforcement and counterterrorism officials, many of them high level, are the first indication that the program was viewed with skepticism by key figures at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the agency responsible for disrupting plots and investigating terrorism on American soil.
All the officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the program is classified. It is coming under scrutiny next month in hearings on Capitol Hill, which were planned after members of Congress raised questions about the legality of the eavesdropping. The program was disclosed in December by The New York Times.
The law enforcement and counterterrorism officials said the program had uncovered no active Qaeda networks inside the United States planning attacks. "There were no imminent plots - not inside the United States," the former F.B.I. official said.
Some of the officials said the eavesdropping program might have helped uncover people with ties to Al Qaeda in Albany; Portland, Ore.; and Minneapolis. Some of the activities involved recruitment, training or fund-raising.
But, along with several British counterterrorism officials, some of the officials questioned assertions by the Bush administration that the program was the key to uncovering a plot to detonate fertilizer bombs in London in 2004. The F.B.I. and other law enforcement officials also expressed doubts about the importance of the program's role in another case named by administration officials as a success in the fight against terrorism, an aborted scheme to topple the Brooklyn Bridge with a blow torch.
Some officials said that in both cases, they had already learned of the plans through interrogation of prisoners or other means.
Immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration pressed the nation's intelligence agencies and the F.B.I. to move urgently to thwart any more plots. The N.S.A., whose mission is to spy overseas, began monitoring the international e-mail messages and phone calls of people inside the United States who were linked, even indirectly, to suspected Qaeda figures.
Under a presidential order, the agency conducted the domestic eavesdropping without seeking the warrants ordinarily required from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which handles national security matters. The administration has defended the legality of the program, pointing to what it says is the president's inherent constitutional power to defend the country and to legislation passed by Congress after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Administration officials told Mr. Mueller, the F.B.I. director, of the eavesdropping program, and his agency was enlisted to run down leads from it, several current and former officials said.
While he and some bureau officials discussed the fact that the program bypassed the intelligence surveillance court, Mr. Mueller expressed no concerns about that to them, those officials said. But another government official said Mr. Mueller had questioned the administration about the legal authority for the program.
Officials who were briefed on the N.S.A. program said the agency collected much of the data passed on to the F.B.I. as tips by tracing phone numbers in the United States called by suspects overseas, and then by following the domestic numbers to other numbers called. In other cases, lists of phone numbers appeared to result from the agency's computerized scanning of communications coming into and going out of the country for names and keywords that might be of interest. The deliberate blurring of the source of the tips caused some frustration among those who had to follow up.
F.B.I. field agents, who were not told of the domestic surveillance programs, complained that they often were given no information about why names or numbers had come under suspicion. A former senior prosecutor who was familiar with the eavesdropping programs said intelligence officials turning over the tips "would always say that we had information whose source we can't share, but it indicates that this person has been communicating with a suspected Qaeda operative." He said, "I would always wonder, what does 'suspected' mean?"
"The information was so thin," he said, "and the connections were so remote, that they never led to anything, and I never heard any follow-up."
In response to the F.B.I. complaints, the N.S.A. eventually began ranking its tips on a three-point scale, with 3 being the highest priority and 1 the lowest, the officials said. Some tips were considered so hot that they were carried by hand to top F.B.I. officials. But in bureau field offices, the N.S.A. material continued to be viewed as unproductive, prompting agents to joke that a new bunch of tips meant more "calls to Pizza Hut," one official, who supervised field agents, said.
The views of some bureau officials about the value of the N.S.A.'s domestic surveillance offers a revealing glimpse of the difficulties law enforcement and intelligence agencies have had cooperating since Sept. 11.
The N.S.A., criticized by the national Sept. 11 commission for its "avoidance of anything domestic" before the attacks, moved aggressively into the domestic realm after them. But the legal debate over its warrantless eavesdropping has embroiled the agency in just the kind of controversy its secretive managers abhor. The F.B.I., meanwhile, has struggled over the last four years to expand its traditional mission of criminal investigation to meet the larger menace of terrorism.
Admiral Inman, the former N.S.A. director and deputy director of C.I.A., said the F.B.I. complaints about thousands of dead-end leads revealed a chasm between very different disciplines. Signals intelligence, the technical term for N.S.A.'s communications intercepts, rarely produces "the complete information you're going to get from a document or a witness" in a traditional F.B.I. investigation, he said.
Some F.B.I. officials said they were uncomfortable with the expanded domestic role played by the N.S.A. and other intelligence agencies, saying most intelligence officers lacked the training needed to safeguard Americans' privacy and civil rights. They said some protections had to be waived temporarily in the months after Sept. 11 to detect a feared second wave of attacks, but they questioned whether emergency procedures like the eavesdropping should become permanent.
That discomfort may explain why some F.B.I. officials may seek to minimize the benefits of the N.S.A. program or distance themselves from the agency. "This wasn't our program," an F.B.I. official said. "It's not our mess, and we're not going to clean it up."
The N.S.A.'s legal authority for collecting the information it passed to the F.B.I. is uncertain. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act requires a warrant for the use of so-called pen register equipment that records American phone numbers, even if the contents of the calls are not intercepted. But officials with knowledge of the program said no warrants were sought to collect the numbers, and it is unclear whether the secret executive order signed by Mr. President Bush in 2002 to authorize eavesdropping without warrants also covered the collection of phone numbers and e-mail addresses.
Aside from the director, F.B.I. officials did not question the legal status of the tips, assuming that N.S.A. lawyers had approved. They were more concerned about the quality and quantity of the material, which produced "mountains of paperwork" often more like raw data than conventional investigative leads.
"It affected the F.B.I. in the sense that they had to devote so many resources to tracking every single one of these leads, and, in my experience, they were all dry leads," the former senior prosecutor said. "A trained investigator never would have devoted the resources to take those leads to the next level, but after 9/11, you had to."
By the administration's account, the N.S.A. eavesdropping helped lead investigators to Iyman Faris, an Ohio truck driver and friend of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who is believed to be the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks. Mr. Faris spoke of toppling the Brooklyn Bridge by taking a torch to its suspension cables, but concluded that it would not work. He is now serving a 20-year sentence in a federal prison.
But as in the London fertilizer bomb case, some officials with direct knowledge of the Faris case dispute that the N.S.A. information played a significant role.
By contrast, different officials agree that the N.S.A.'s domestic operations played a role in the arrest of an imam and another man in Albany in August 2004 as part of an F.B.I. counterterrorism sting investigation. The men, Yassin Aref, 35, and Mohammed Hossain, 49, are awaiting trial on charges that they attempted to engineer the sale of missile launchers to an F.B.I. undercover informant.
In addition, government officials said the N.S.A. eavesdropping program might have assisted in the investigations of people with suspected Qaeda ties in Portland and Minneapolis. In the Minneapolis case, charges of supporting terrorism were filed in 2004 against Mohammed Abdullah Warsame, a Canadian citizen. Six people in the Portland case were convicted of crimes that included money laundering and conspiracy to wage war against the United States.
Even senior administration officials with access to classified operations suggest that drawing a clear link between a particular source and the unmasking of a potential terrorist is not always possible.
When Michael Chertoff, the homeland security secretary, was asked last week on "The Charlie Rose Show" whether the N.S.A. wiretapping program was important in deterring terrorism, he said, "I don't know that it's ever possible to attribute one strand of intelligence from a particular program."
But Mr. Chertoff added, "I can tell you in general the process of doing whatever you can do technologically to find out what is being said by a known terrorist to other people, and who that person is communicating with, that is without a doubt one of the critical tools we've used time and again."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/17/2006 00:58 ||
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#1
NYT, I love them. Hard hitting, insightful objective, and make the best s*it sandwiches I ever had.
#2
The law enforcement and counterterrorism officials said the program had uncovered no active Qaeda networks inside the United States planning attacks. "There were no imminent plots - not inside the United States," the former F.B.I. official said.
Some of the officials said the eavesdropping program might have helped uncover people with ties to Al Qaeda in Albany; Portland, Ore.; and Minneapolis. Some of the activities involved recruitment, training or fund-raising.
These two paragraphs follow one another in the story.
They contradict each other.
The NYT does not realize that, or doesn't want us to realize that.
Stupid, dishonest, or both?
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
01/17/2006 7:55 Comments ||
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#3
And count on some overworked agent at the FBI to engage in an interagency spitting contest in public.
#5
If the FBI had working computers instead of years of failure the requests would have been simple to process.
The FBI should quit trying to define what they need and just clone the CIA system and software.
If it takes the Prez to step in and make it so - so be it.
#6
#5 If the FBI had working computers instead of years of failure the requests would have been simple to process.
The FBI should quit trying to define what they need and just clone the CIA system and software.
If it takes the Prez to step in and make it so - so be it.
Posted by: 3dc 2006-01-17 12:15
Ditto 3dc. The bureau's IT problems are all too well documented.
Quickie: I wonder how many of the "dead ends" were actually due to insufficient Arabic translators -- or Islamonutz symps in the ranks. We've seen how the Fibbies can screw up (nicest way I can phrase it) in this regard. Their abject failure in this, even to the point of seeming to be entirely on the wrong side due to moronic PCism - or worse, cancels out much of what they bring to the table, IMHO.
The turf BS must stop if we are to succeed. Inept management must be shuffled out the door. Old Boy networks and HQ-itis must be tamed or broken or punished.
The Fibbies have hosed almost every opportunity (that becomes public - and surely everyone is aware that they are the ultimate publicity whores) to prove they are anything more than dogged lawyers with a top-notch forensics lab. They are best when telling the victim's survivors, "Yep, he's dead, alright. There were 17 perps, 462 co-conspirators, and 479 motives identified. If you'll look at this chart..."
Their Law Enforcement mantra, 70's era IT, and institutional blinders mean they pretty much suck in the preventative arena.
I figure this is primarily circle-the-wagons BS from the HQ clique cuz they're institutionally incapable of the job we need them to do now and incapable of changing the institution without a clearance sale at the top dawgs and middle wannabees levels who are invested in the existing system.
The former vice-president Al Gore launched a withering attack on the White House yesterday for authorising wiretaps without court oversight, and accused President George Bush of repeatedly breaking the law. The strongly worded speech makes Mr Gore the most prominent political figure in America to weigh in on the wiretapping scandal.
That's not true, lots of nutty Dems have whinged on over this.
Mr Gore, who lost the 2000 election to Mr Bush following the intervention of the supreme court, also went further than other Democratic critics in accusing the president of wrongdoing. Mr Gore said yesterday that the decision to bypass the courts was part of a pattern of behaviour from the Bush administration of "indifference" to the constitution.
To be distinguished from trying to get the Florida courts to steal the election for you, Al?
"We still have much to learn about the NSA's domestic surveillance. What we do know about this pervasive wiretapping virtually compels the conclusion that the president of the United States has been breaking the law repeatedly and insistently," Mr Gore said in a speech delivered to mark Martin Luther King day.
I guess if you repeat the assertion often enough it's true, so long as you're a Democrat.
"A president who breaks the law is a threat to the very structure of our government," he said.
One could make a carefully-constructed argument about wiretapping and the need to distinguish tapping the communications of terrorists versus tapping those of ordinary Americans. One could argue that a firewall is needed between the two, and that the President's actions, though well intentioned, were eroding that firewall. To make that argument stick, one would would need to present it in as calm and dispassionate manner as possible, rising about ordinary politics to be an erudite senior statesman.
Instead, the Dems trot out good old Al, the latest in a series of fire-breathing, screaming Dhimmis. This effort may play to the Kos kiddies, but average Americans have already switched them off. What distinguishes Al's rant from that of John Conyers, or Jay Rockefeller, or Nancy Pelosi? It's all blubbering, screaming bile. Who wants to listen to that?
In yesterday's speech, Mr Gore also called for an independent counsel to investigate the secret wiretap programme.
Oh yasss, we couldn't possibly figure this out without an independent counsel. Or two. Or three.
He ranked the operation with other controversial decisions by the administration in the war on terror, including its holding of "enemy combatants" indefinitely without trial, and its justification of harsh interrogation techniques. "The disrespect embodied in these apparent mass violations of the law is part of a larger pattern of seeming indifference to the constitution that is deeply troubling to millions of Americans in both political parties," he said.
Mr Bush insists that he acted within the law and that Congress implicitly authorised the eavesdropping when it allowed the use of force in response to the 9/11 terror attacks. However, yesterday's broadside from Mr Gore increases the pressure on the White House to offer a fuller explanation of its decisions.
Only in the minds of al Guardian.
The Senate judiciary committee plans to hold hearings next month into the legality of the NSA eavesdropping, and the Republican chairman, Arlen Specter, has indicated that he is sceptical of the Bush administration's assertions that it acted within the law.
Even Specter misunderestimates Bush. Arlen's going to look pretty stoopid when Bush details just how well the program was vetted and reviewed by lots of Democrats, and how concerns were addressed in a timely way.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/17/2006 00:21 ||
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#1
CHarles Krauthammer on FNC said it dead on, i.e. that most Americans understand that America's survival and identity is at stake, and they are more than willing to tolerate Dubya's and the NSA's actions iff it means victory andor security over an enemy. Krauthammer also made the point that during WW2, the Govt's interventions/restrictions ags individual rights were far more intrusive and pervasive than today's WOT, and that FEW IFF ANY AMER POLS OR VOTERS EVER COMPLAINED ABOUT ANYTHING - e.g. putting Japanese in relocation camps after Pearl Harbor, or the Army executing Nazi saboteurs without civilian habeas corpus!? Amers in both WW1 and WW2 put up with martial laws,nationwide drafts of young men, limitations of civil rights, and universal consumer shortages, etc. because America was at war and Americans wanted to win the war(s). In legend, wid the MANHATTAN PROJECT Amer corporations pledged to build any and all the necessary facilities and components for nuke bombs for the total sum profit of ONE US DOLLAR. The Dems got nuthin' now except waiting for American Hiroshimas/new 9-11's and pretending vv the MSM that 9-11 was about ONLY Radical Islam, NOT saving and forcing knowingly failed anti-US American Socialism and anti-US OWG/SWO on an unsuspecting America, where Saving America = destroying America = creating Amerika. Americans must pay for the bulk of future International and Global taxation whilst NOT being allowed to govern or dominate the global empire its warriors are fighting and dying for in the ME. The Left > Americans are not allowed to govern our own nation anymore, by and for ourselves, because of our many, innumerable "errors in judgement" = willful warmongering imperialist ways and foreign policies = Americans demand to be ruled by non-Americans and anti-Americans anyway. NOTHING SAYS PROSPEROUS UNIVERSALIST LAISSEZ FAIRE GLOBAL UTOPIA THAN THE TRAGIC BUT NECESSARY, SOCIALIST STATE-PLANNED, HOLOCAUST AND EXTERMINATION OF 200 MILYUHN AMERICAN CITIZENS; NOR 5-1/2 BILYUHN OF THE WORLD'S 6.0BILYUHN, both +/-, AFTER THAT. American Holocaust is good for America, the enviro, and for Globalism and Socialism, etc. True Hyper-correct Clintonian Fascist = Communist, Socialists = Capitalists, Cops/Judges/Law = Mafiosi, Laissez Faire = Regulation-Absolutism, American Army = Red Army,...........................@ Patriotskis demand to be suppressed and repressed, and sent to the re-education or death camps by our own Government anyways, you lucky winner dogs you!?
#3
Problem is simple, he thinks he's still relevant.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
01/17/2006 7:53 Comments ||
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#4
"A president who breaks the law is a threat to the very structure of our government," he said.
Huh.
I seem to recall Gore stood beside Clinton despite Clinton's having been proven to have broken the law. That Gore stayed in an administration that used the IRS to punish critics, wiretapped political rivals, and went through their FBI files. That Gore himself wanted to be president despite his own role in raising bribes campaign funds from foreign powers.
What an ass.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
01/17/2006 8:13 Comments ||
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#5
There was no controlling authority, as I recall Gorebot's own words.
#6
Bush should've drank large amounts of ice tea and been in the can taking a leak when decisions like these were made. I think that was somebody else's excuse awhile back.
#8
Not too long ago I was totally against holding hearings about NSA and other issues, but now I say â Full steam ahead.â Hold it in the Judiciary committee and subpoena every left-wing nut ball from around the globe. Given their recent show during the Alito hearings I know the Democrats would rise to the occasion. Imagine if you will a full-fledged circus every day in the Senate and every evening the Democrat leaders have to disavow every screwball conspiracy that was testified to during the day. Jon Stewart would have to make his show an hour long just to keep up with the material! Have these hearings (rants) continue through the election cycle and I doubt there would be many voters that would trust the Democrats with anything above trash collector. Just my two cents and a suggestion to the dark overlord (Rove).
Biological weapons pose a far more serious long-term terrorist threat to the West than nuclear weapons, according to Washington's leading counter-terrorism expert.
And Henry "Hank" Crumpton, the newly-appointed head of counter-terrorism at the US State Department, believes that it is simply a matter of time before international terrorist groups such as al-Qa'eda acquire weapons of mass destruction and use them in attacks.
In an exclusive interview with The Daily Telegraph, Mr Crumpton, who previously spent 20 years working for the Central Intelligence Agency, warned yesterday that the "war on terror" was likely to last for decades.
"This threat has changed the way we will fight wars in the future," he said.
"We are talking about micro targets such as al-Qa'eda which, when combined with WMD, have a macro impact. I rate the probability of terror groups using WMD [to attack Western targets] as very high. It is simply a question of time.
"And it is not just the nuclear threat that bothers me. I think, if anything, the biological threat is going to grow.
"As catastrophic as a nuclear attack would be, it would be self-contained. But if you look at a worst-case scenario for a biological attack, it would be difficult to determine whether or not it was a terrorist attack, and it would be far more difficult to contain."
After the September 11 attacks on the United States in 2001, Mr Crumpton, who was then a senior CIA officer, played a leading role in the campaign to overthrow the Taliban and destroy al-Qa'eda's operational infrastructure in Afghanistan, which relied heavily on covert operations.
After the war, allied forces found that al-Qa'eda had been working on anthrax programmes that it intended to use on western targets.
"They had hired a very experienced biologist to work on this. They were very serious about it and there is no reason to believe they have given up on their interest."
The fear that terrorist groups might be able to acquire WMD from rogue states such as Iran or Syria explains Washington's determination to confront Iran over its nuclear programme.
"If we look at the threat posed by Iran, they have links with Hizbollah [the Lebanese Shi'ite Muslim militia], which is a terrorist organisation with global reach, and they are actively pursuing WMD. And the leadership has made a conscious decision to defy international treaties. I am deeply troubled by this."
As for taking action to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, Mr Crumpton insisted that "every option is on the table" - including military action.
"I would not rule out anything because of the particularly grave threat that we are facing," he said.
In a distinguished career with the CIA, during which he won four of the agency's highest awards, Mr Crumpton was a key figure in its covert operations against al-Qa'eda pre-September 11.
Referred to simply as "Henry" in the 9/11 Commission Report, Mr Crumpton tried to persuade the CIA to do more in Afghanistan to hunt down Osama bin Laden before the attacks, but two key proposals to tackle al-Qa'eda were turned down.
After the September 11 attacks, in which he lost many close friends, he was initially overwhelmed by sorrow.
"But that sorrow was soon replaced by anger, anger that al-Qa'eda could do this to innocent people - and the anger lasted for more than a year."
Mr Crumpton stresses the coalition's achievements in disrupting bin Laden's network. In his view, al-Qa'eda's infrastructure has been so badly damaged that it is now struggling to control the groups that would like to support it.
"They can't communicate with their supporters unless the odd courier breaks through. They can't get access to money and things like that. We have made life very difficult for them."
But despite the initial success achieved during the Afghan war in 2001, he expressed disappointment with the support Washington had received from its European allies since hostilities ended. "The job was not finished and it is not finished now." Bin Laden, who escaped to Pakistan, was "in all probability" still alive, he said.
The regime of President Assad in Syria also seriously threatens western security, he says. "The regime continues to support terror organisations. And we know that the Baathist leadership fled to Damascus taking with them money and terrorist expertise, and we cannot rule out the fact that some of that expertise related to WMD."
#1
The time is NOW to inform Islam that any major biological attack will result in one or both shrines of Mecca and Medina being contaminated in a similar fashion, for ONE ENTIRE YEAR or more so that the next haj is included. Any subsequent biological attacks within that probationary period would result in a second haj being disrupted by continuing contamination. Rinse and repeat.
A dirty bomb release would result in the shrines being dusted with whatever isotope had been utilized during the attack. Again, this contamination would persist through the next calendar haj and be extended upon any repeat attacks. Rinse and repeat.
A nuclear terrorist attack would result in Medina being immolated with Mecca being docketed for subsequent attack. Rinse and one last repeat.
Islam must be made to understand that their inability or unwillingness (I no longer care which it is) to restrain the violent jihadis in their midst is ISLAM'S PROBLEM and not something outside forces must be obliged to address.
Lack of restraint means an inevitable termination of the haj for however long it takes the attacks to stop. The only alternative I see to this approach is to take the shrines by military force and hold them hostage until Islam genuinely and authentically renounces violent jihad.
Until then, should significant NBC (Nuclear, Biological, Chemical) attacks occur, they can look forward to severe disruptions in the basic practice of their religion.
Richard Cheney, the US vice-president, has left Washington for Egypt and Saudi Arabia where he will hold talks with the leaders of both countries about the war in Iraq and regional security, among other things. On Tuesday, the US vice-president is scheduled to meet Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, officials said on Sunday. No other details of the talks have been publicly released, but an administration official told AFP that "peace and democracy in the Middle East - I think that is going to be the general focus of him going there."
Posted by: Fred ||
01/17/2006 00:00 ||
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Pakistan's ruling party on Monday demanded an apology for an alleged CIA airstrike that killed at least 17 people, but the country's prime minister said his trip to the United States this week would go ahead as planned.
Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz and his ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Q on Monday condemned the alleged U.S. airstrike on a village near the Afghan border, which intelligence officials have said targeted al-Qaeda's No. 2 leader, Ayman al-Zawahri
But Aziz said he was still scheduled to leave Tuesday for the United States, where he said he would talk about security issues but also meet business leaders to encourage foreign investment.
The leader called Friday's airstrike on a village near the Afghan border "very regrettable" but said, "I don't think that takes away from the fact that Pakistan needs investment."
The Muslim League-Q party later issued a statement demanding an official apology from the United States.
Islamic groups, meanwhile, vowed to step up anti-American protests.
Al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden's top lieutenant, was invited to an Islamic dinner in the village but did not show up, two Pakistani officials told The Associated Press.
Al-Zawahri sent some aides to the dinner instead and investigators were trying to determine whether they had been in any of the three houses destroyed in the missile strike, one of the officials said Sunday.
In Washington, a U.S counterterrorism official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the information's sensitivity, said it is not yet known if al-Zawahri was killed in Friday's attack.
The official said the compound that was hit has been visited in the past by significant terrorist figures. "There were strong indications that was happening again," the official said.
With media reports out of Pakistan indicating that at least four foreigners were killed, the official said it appears that some damage was done, even if al-Zawahri was not there. "This place had a history," the official said.
Islamic groups held nationwide protests Sunday as anger mounted over the attack that Pakistan said killed innocent civilians.
"There will be more ... bigger protests," Shahid Shamsi, a spokesman for the anti-American religious coalition that organized the rallies, said Monday.
Protesters believe the airstrike was ordered by the CIA and launched by U.S. forces pursuing Taliban and al-Qaeda militants in neighboring Afghanistan, and Shamsi said the war on terror should not extend across borders without permission.
"Pakistani civilians, including children, were killed," Shamsi said. "Principles cannot be broken in the name of (fighting) terrorism."
In the first comments about the attack from a top U.S. official, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Sunday that serious action was necessary against al-Qaeda.
"These are not people who can be dealt with lightly," Rice said. (Related news: Rice: Al-Qaeda can't be treated lightly)
Many in this nation of 150 million people oppose the government's participation in the U.S.-led war against international terrorist groups, and there is increasing frustration over a recent series of suspected U.S. attacks along the frontier aimed at militants.
"They should try to work to improve their image," Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said Monday of U.S. activities in the region.
A senior army official told The Associated Press on Sunday that "foreigners" were reported in the area around the village of Damadola, four miles from the Afghanistan border, but he said there was no information al-Zawahri was among them.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/17/2006 00:55 ||
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#1
Apology? Ok, we are sorry we missed the bastard.
#2
But Aziz said he was still scheduled to leave Tuesday for the United States, where he said he would talk about security issues but also meet business leaders to encourage foreign investment.
The North East Students' Organization has claimed that the Al-Qaeda, have set up more than 'fourteen branches in the North East India' with the support of the Pakistan intelligence agency, the Inter Service Intelligence.
The NESO in its memorandum to all the seven states Governor in the region urged to take it as a 'serious matter' with the United Progressive Alliance government so as to take measures to curb their illegal activities that may disturb the tranquility of the region and its indigenous people.
The NESO an all the students' body of the region, reiterated its demand to the centre for expediting all ongoing political negotiations with different armed groups and to work out a time frame for an early and permanent solution for bringing peace in the North Eastern Region.
More than a dozen of armed groups in the region are fighting for a 'sovereign state or homeland' with the support of the ISI in Bangladesh and Pakistan.
Demanding a special constitutional status for the North East region, "like in the case of Jammu and Kashmir," the NESO in its memorandum stated "The north eastern region is a microscopic minority in terms of ethnicity, religion. Language. and such we need special protection".
Welcoming the 'Look East Policy' of the central government, the NESO urged the UPA government not to set up an administrative center in Kolkata. "The road map of the 'Look East policy' be made transparent and beneficial to the people of north east", the memo stated.
Extending its support to the Khasi Students' Union in its opposition to Uranium mining in Meghalaya due to "well-known-ill-effects" that such mining could bring about to the land and its people, the NESO demanded from the centre to immediately stop this dangerous and hazardous project for the protection and well-being of the environment and the indigenous people whose only source of livelihood is through the land and its resources.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/17/2006 00:48 ||
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US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Monday defended tough US tactics to root out Al Qaeda militants on Pakistanâs border after a deadly air strike on a village sparked a wave of angry street protests.
Ms Rice would not comment on the reported deaths of 18 villagers in a raid said to target Osama bin Ladenâs deputy. She only said, âWeâll continue to work with the Pakistanis and weâll try to address their concerns.â
But speaking to reporters en route to Liberia for the inauguration of president-elect Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Rice made no apologies for US actions against suspected Al Qaeda forces near the border with Afghanistan.
âItâs obviously difficult at this time for the Pakistani government,â she said of the attack that sent thousands of Pakistanis into the streets in at least five cities and prompted an official protest from Islamabad.
âBut I think I would just say, to both the Pakistani government and the Pakistani people, weâre allies in the war on terror,â Ms Rice said, adding Al Qaeda and its Taliban allies âare not people who can be dealt with lightly.â
âThe biggest threat to Pakistan, of course, is what Al-Qaeda has done in trying to radicalize the country, the extremist elements that really occupy ... parts of the country in important ways, (and) tried twice to assassinate President Musharraf.â
Asked about Fridayâs strike reportedly carried out by a missile- firing US Predator drone in hopes of killing Al Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahiri, Ms Rice said, âI canât speak to the specifics of this particular circumstance.â
But she said: âThe frontier area is extremely difficult and itâs been lawless there for a long time. Pakistani forces are operating there, trying to take control. Weâre trying to help.â
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/17/2006 00:46 ||
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NEW DELHI - The dispute over Kashmir and measures to build confidence between nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan were the focus on Tuesday of their third round of talks in a sweeping peace process, officials said.
The two countriesâ foreign secretaries headed the talks running through Wednesday in New Delhi, where they will review progress made at lower-level meetings and plot a course for future negotiations, said an Indian foreign ministry spokesman, Natvej Sarna.
Pakistan Foreign Secretary Riaz Mohammed Khan, who arrived in the Indian capital on Monday, said he expected talks with his Indian counterpart Shyam Saran to be positive. He told reporters he would discuss the Kashmir dispute, peace and security and other issues with Saran. âI donât want to prejudge the outcome of discussions at this stage,â he said.
Earlier, Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam said in Islamabad that Pakistan is approaching the talks with a âpositive frame of mindâ and looks forward to making progress on resolving disputes.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/17/2006 00:02 ||
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Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz on Monday condemned an alleged CIA air strike on a border village that killed at least 17 people, but said he would go ahead with a planned trip to the United States to build business ties, AP reported. Aziz said he is still scheduled to leave Tuesday for the US, where he said he would talk about security issues but also meet business leaders to encourage foreign investment. The leader called Friday's air strike on a village near the Afghan border "very regrettable" but said, "I don't think that takes away from the fact that Pakistan needs investment."
Posted by: Fred ||
01/17/2006 00:00 ||
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Pakistan's Islamist opposition has vowed more protests against a US air strike that killed at least 18 civilians while commentators said the raid would boost support for fighters. The air strike which took place on Friday was apparently aimed at aimed at Osama bin Ladin's deputy and al-Qaida's second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri.
Intelligence officials said US counterparts had told them the order for the strike was based on information that al-Zawahiri, had been invited to a dinner at a village in the Bajaur tribal region near the Afghan border. Two Muslim clerics known for harbouring al Qaida fighters attended but left hours before the raid and al-Zawahiri did not show up, they said. Although the US government has not publicly acknowledged any responsibility, intelligence officials in Washington with knowledge of the operation said it was aimed at al-Zawahiri and said they believed drone aircraft armed with missiles were used.
So the information was correct, Ayman didn't show up, but the other two clerics were there and left early. So what's the beef? Sounds like it would have been a well justified strike without Ayman being the target.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/17/2006 00:00 ||
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#1
never miss an opportunity for seething ... queue here please , men first , and i use the term 'men' very lightly indeed ...
#2
What is it about cause and effect the Pakis don't understand. The reason the attack took place is 'cause you asshats let these SOBs take refuge in Pakland
Differences between the west and Russia and China were exposed yesterday during a meeting in London to discuss strategy for tackling the crisis over Iran's suspected nuclear weapons programme.
After seven hours of talks Britain, France and Germany announced they are to seek Iran's referral to the security council at a meeting on February 2 and 3 of the UN's nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Javier Solana, the EU foreign affairs chief, said he was "confident" Russia and China will back the referral.
But both countries expressed serious reservations about future handling of the crisis, in particular the prospect of the security council imposing sanctions on Iran.
Russia, though slowly shifting towards the west's position, is still holding out hope that Tehran may yet accept a compromise. China, which has close economic ties with Iran, is the most hardline in opposing tough action against Tehran.
One European diplomat said: "What is really crucial is support from Russia and China. China does not look too good. China is the major obstacle."
He added that China, which has a veto on the security council, felt squeezed between pressure from the west and dependency on Iranian oil.
A British diplomat said: "There was serious concern about Iranian moves to restart enrichment-related activities contrary to the appeals of the international community not to do so." He added that "there was a thorough exchange of views" on the role of the security council.
The crisis escalated last week when Iran broke seals on uranium enrichment equipment. Iran denies that it has a covert nuclear weapons programme.
The London meeting between senior officials from the US, Britain, France, China and Russia - the five permanent members of the UN security council - plus Germany, was held to try to avoid a repetition of the security council divisions that marked the run-up to the war in Iraq. The west's fear is that China could exercise its veto on Iran's behalf.
The Europeans have begun drafting a resolution to put before the IAEA. "It's short. It calls for [IAEA chief Mohamed] ElBaradei to report Iran to the UN security council," one diplomat said. The western nations have a simple majority in favour of referral but are hoping that Russia and China will back it. The US and Europeans are focusing on Russia in the hope that if Moscow backs their approach, then China will also follow.
President Vladimir Putin, after meeting Angela Merkel on her first visit to Moscow as German chancellor, signalled exasperation with Iran's decision to break the seals. Indicating he was moving towards the west's position, he said: "As for Russia, and Germany, and our European partners and the US, we have very close positions on the Iranian problem."
But he cautioned against "abrupt, erroneous steps" and suggested the issue could still be defused without reference to the UN. He said Iran has not excluded the possibility of accepting a Russian compromise in which Tehran would conduct uranium enrichment in Russia rather than Iran. "One of the main problems is the enrichment of uranium. We proposed to our Iranian partners to set up a joint enrichment venture on Russian territory ... our partners told us they did not exclude the implementation of our proposal."
But China, speaking before the London meeting, said resorting to the security council would "complicate the issue", citing Iran's threat to hit back by halting snap UN inspections at its atomic plants.
The Chinese foreign minister said "all relevant sides should remain restrained and stick to solving the Iranian nuclear issue through negotiations".
Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, said that dialogue with Moscow and Beijing was of "crucial importance".
Iran yesterday banned CNN journalists from the country after the broadcaster misquoted President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as saying that Iran wanted nuclear weapons, the ISNA students news agency said.
What happens next:
Vienna - Europeans plan emergency IAEA meeting on February 2. Iran will try to avoid referral to security council by reopening talks with Russia
New York - Once before the security council, the resolution could tell Iran to suspend uranium enrichment. If ignored, talks would get tougher as US and Europe sought sanctions
Tehran - Iran could then scrap deal on intrusive nuclear checks, and disrupt oil supplies if sanctions imposed
US/Israel - Air strikes could begin to delay Iran's work on nuclear weapon.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/17/2006 01:07 ||
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Eight United Nations managers have been suspended with pay a comfortable allowance and a serving wench as part of an investigation into the world body's procurement services following scandals in the oil-for-food program in Iraq, UN officials say. The investigation by the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services is the result of a probe into contracts in the UN peacekeeping department, which is fielding about 85,000 troops, police and civilians around the world. Four of the suspended managers are in UN Procurement Services and four were recalled from peacekeeping missions, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.
So the irregularities aren't associated with oil-for-food, but with the peacekeeping budget.
"Placing these eight staff members on special leave is an administrative, not disciplinary, measure," Mr Dujarric said. "Staff members on administrative leave who are not the subject of any action will be returned to their posts as expeditiously as possible." The suspension apparently deals with those in charge of projects or contracts where irregularities were discovered in the audit, which one official said raised "red flags".
Posted by: Fred ||
01/17/2006 00:00 ||
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#1
The suspension apparently but knows for sure, deals with those in charge of projects or contracts where irregularities were discovered in the first ever audit, which one official said raised "red smallish white flags".
January 17, 2006: One of the most unreported stories concerns Saddam Husseinâs connection to various terrorist groups, including al-Qaeda. This has been lost in a lot of the arguments over weapons of mass destruction. Some of it is due to skepticism about any claim made by the American government. Another part is due to an insistence on a court-room level of proof â an impossible standard for intelligence agencies to meet in most cases. That said, evidence is emerging of the Saddam Hussein regimeâs connections to terrorism. The regime openly handed out checks to the families of Palestinian murder-suicide bombers. It also harbored the terrorist Abu Nidal â until the terroristâs reported suicide. Abu Abbas, the mastermind of the Achille Lauro hijacking (during which a wheelchair-bound American citizen was killed), also was in Iraq when captured.
Within weeks of the September 11, 2001 attacks, Czech intelligence reported that ringleader Mohammed Atta had met with an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague. This report was one of the most publicized - and contested â in the run-up to the liberation of Iraq. On one occasion, the New York Times reported that Czech President Vlacav Havel had called to disavow the report â and Havelâs spokesman promptly labeled the New York Times report a âfabricationâ. An editorial that labeled the Czech informant a drunk was rebutted within days. This controversy distracted from another link: An Iraqi who attended the January 2000 summit in Kuala Lampur, Malaysia after escorting at least one of the hijackers who flew the airliner into the Pentagon. That Iraqi, Ahmed Hikmat Shakir, had contact information for the safe houses used in the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center and a 1995 al-Qaeda plot to destroy airliners over the Pacific when he was taken into custody in Qatar. Shakir was later released by the Qatari government, but taken into custody by Jordan until pressure from Amnesty International resulted in his release.
But the most interesting evidence is from documents. One of these, which mentioned bringing in an envoy from bin Laden to Baghdad to discuss âthe future of our relationshipâ, was recovered by a Toronto Star reporter in April, 2003, shortly after the fall of Saddamâs regime. Other documents have been leaked to various outlets. One, discovered during Operation Iraqi Freedom, was an al-Qaeda manual on chemical warfare that mentioned numerous Iraqi officials. Other documents showed how Saddamâs regime trained numerous terrorists, including the Algerian-based GSPC, the Sudanese Islamic Army, and Ansar-al-Islam, which carried out operations in Kurdistan. Over two million documents are currently held by CENTCOM, most of which are unclassified. FOIA requests have been denied, despite the fact the documents are unclassified. Only 50,000 have been examined, most dealing with weapons of mass destruction. The rest have been lying around, indexed in a database known as HARMONY.
The documents on terrorism that have leaked carry enough evidence that tie Saddam Hussein to a number of terrorist groups, some of which have lengthy track records of attacks on the United States. The additional documents could shed additional light on these connections. There is a chance the apparent connections to terrorism are all a misunderstanding, but there is a better chance the author will get a date with the actress who stars in a prime-time series that has usually won its timeslot.
Posted by: Steve ||
01/17/2006 09:26 ||
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"But but Bush lied and 2,000 died!"
The liberals said stroking their new copies of the poKoran and ACLU handbooks. "We are not concerned with 9-11 and nether should you."
Iraqi judge Said al Hamashi will preside over the high-profile trial of Saddam Hussein, along with seven former senior officials, in the Dujail case. He will replace Judge Rezkar Mohammed Amin who tended his resignation on Saturday. "I have nothing to do with the reasons that drove my colleague Judge Amin to resign. I hope he returns to his post and preside over the remaining court sessions," he told Asharq Al Awsat from Baghdad . If Judge Amin "insisted on resigning, I will preside over the next session as planned, as there is no need for it to be postponed," al Hamashi said. Al Amin was said to have resigned because of from government pressure The trial is due to resume on 24 January.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/17/2006 00:00 ||
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Courage, Perseverance, and Jurisprudence is whats needed lest Saddam loyalists and anti-US/Dubya agendists succeed in turning the trials per se into a "SAVE SADDAM" PC anti-US show and Saddam gets off scott free, with at best protracted simple exile from Iraq.
The United States has warned the Palestinians that inclusion of the resistance group Hamas in any new government could affect US-backed efforts to establish an independent Palestinian state. Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state on Monday stopped short of threatening a cut in US aid to the Palestinians if they form a government with ministers from the hard-line Islamic movement after parliamentary polls on 25 January. "Let's just see what happens after the elections," Rice told reporters accompanying her on a visit to Liberia.
But she added the US-sponsored peace road map directed at creating a Palestinian state was a "two-way street". "After these elections, the ability of the Palestinians to engage the Israelis to move forward on the roadmap is obviously going to be dependent on having people in the governing structures who believe in the principles of the roadmap," she said. "In order to negotiate with a party you have to believe in its right to exist. In order to have freedom of movement and%
Posted by: Fred ||
01/17/2006 00:00 ||
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Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state on Monday stopped short of threatening a cut in US aid to the Palestinians if they form a government with ministers from the hard-line Islamic movement after parliamentary polls on 25 January.
Why even devote further effort toward these idiots? Let them make their choice, and should it turn out to be Hamas, yank the aid. They get what they want, we save money.
#2
A warning, then a stroke. Come on, Condi-you can do better than that. Be sure that we darn well expect you to-not one red cent to a government led by Hamas. Read it, understand it.
Palestinian Interior Minister Nasser Yousuf said yesterday that fighters in Gaza have rejected a Palestinian Authority plan to put their weapons in storage during next weekâs parliamentary election as a way to reduce the risk of violence. Interior Minister Yousuf said a proposal had been made for factions in Gaza to collect their own weapons just before the ballot and put them into a storage area to which they would have one key and the Palestinian Authority another. âBut they rejected the proposal,â Yousuf told reporters. Khader Habib, an Islamic Jihad leader, confirmed the proposal was rejected, but denied that the groupâs weapons contributed to Gazaâs âchaos and anarchyâ or threatened security during the elections.
"No, no! Certainly not! What would we have to do with violence?"
Yousuf said the Palestinian Authority had offered police protection to faction leaders in Gaza in the hope that they would leave their armed bodyguards at home on election day. But that too was rejected. Habib said the armed factions âknow better how to protect their leaders.â In a warning to fighters, Yousuf said security forces had âclear instructions to confront any attempt to use arms during the election period.â He was speaking after talks with UN special envoy for the Middle East peace process, Alvaro de Soto.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/17/2006 00:00 ||
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As much as I hate to admit it, he has a point.
Disarm and you're just another easy target.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
01/17/2006 7:59 Comments ||
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Hundreds of ultra-Orthodox on Monday blocked a road leading to the Ramat Beit Shemesh neighborhood near Jerusalem, set fire to garbage carts and hurled stones at police officers who were dispatched to the area. The reason for the commotion was a protest against a new family that moved to the neighborhood and is "not religious enough," according to the protestors. An hour later, police officers managed to disperse the demonstration and opened the road for traffic. The demonstrators were also protesting the arrest of two ultra-Orthodox men Sunday night, after the two blocked the road with garbage bins to protest against the presence of the new family. During Monday's riots, police officers arrested five more ultra-Orthodox on suspicion of blocking the road.
The new family moved to Ramat Beit Shemesh a number of weeks ago. The other families in the neighborhood decided the newcomers were "not religious enough" and began harassing them in a bid to prompt them to move somewhere else.
This is not the first time ultra-Orthodox people are rioting in the area. In September, clashes erupted between police officers and about 100 ultra-Orthodox residents next to a neighborhood pizzeria. The protestors arrived at the pizzeria and demanded that its owner close it, claiming that he was selling pizzas to inappropriately dressed teenagers. A policewoman was lightly injured during the clashes and an ultra-Orthodox man was arrested.
Two and a half years ago, neighborhood residents demonstrated against a new bus route connecting the town of Beit Shemesh with ultra-orthodox neighborhoods in Jerusalem. "The buses are not modest enough," the ultra-Orthodox residents claimed, while attempting to block the neighborhood's main road. Police removed the protestors from the area and arrested seven ultra-Orthodox men on suspicion they tried to disrupt buses. The peasants are revolting. Disgusting, even.
#1
"The reason for the commotion was a protest against a new family that moved to the neighborhood and is "not religious enough," according to the protestors."
The ultra-orthodox jews are really whack/fanatic/bigoted/intolerant--hope everyone understands that. Better not to have illusions about them.
#3
They were there before the State of Israel -- a few probably trace back to the original Jebusite inhabitants (pre-King David). Even when the Romans, Christians, and Muslims evicted them from the city, a core always remained and returned. But they are very tribal and very territorial, and not at all nice about it.
#5
well the Ultra-Orthdox in Boro Park Brooklyn arent like that, and the ones in Williamsburg seem able to deal with artist types fleeing the high rent areas of Manhattan. Partly this is just the guys in Jerusalem are more stirred up (IE crazy) but its also perhaps a reaction to some secular Israelis having been hostile to the ultra-orthodox moving into secular neighborhoods.
While the ultraOrthodox may not be paragons of openmindedness, Id be reluctant to charecterize this without more context.
#9
The ultra-orthodox jews are really whack/fanatic/bigoted/intolerant--hope everyone understands that. Better not to have illusions about them.
Spend some time with ultra-orthodox muslims and you will learn to love ultra-orthodox Jews.
Hint: Ultra-orthodox Jews don't crash planes on buildings, don't behead schoolgirls and don't call for exterminating infidels
Posted by: t zero ||
01/17/2006 13:41 Comments ||
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Agreed. At least some of them, however, are willing to knock an unaccompanied American woman to the ground in the souk in old Jerusalem for the offense of not automatically stepping aside as they walked down the sidewalk 4 abreast.
It not being MY land you see ....
The end guy who did it was careful not to contaminate himself by touching me directly - he used an armful of bags to do it.
1987. I was in the country to xfer military tech to the IDF's main contractor.
#11
They're worse than one might like to think, t zero. To the ultraJews, "infidels" are equal to cattle, and most of them (if they're being good jews) wish we weren't around. They're waiting for their g-d to knock us off the planet, and/or put us in their place, which they believe will happen when their temple is rebuilt and they're able to offer animal sacrifice again. Christians, Moslems, pagans--are all the same to the ultraJews. And I've known both Moslems and Jews--the ultra variety of either are not as different as could be supposed.
"Spend some time with ultra-orthodox muslims and you will learn to love ultra-orthodox Jews."v
Well, probably not. The governmental societal structures they live in prevent them from acting out their commitments. I knew this Iranian Jew once, who came to faith in Messiah (Jesus). When he was visiting his sister in Israel, the Lubavitchers kidnapped him and transported him back to New York, and stuffed him in one of their homes for the mentally ill. He only escaped with the help of Jews for Jesus. So kidnapping and imprisonment because of one's religious beliefs aren't my idea of a good time. Not to say the ultraIslamics are any better, as you said, "Ultra-orthodox Jews don't crash planes on buildings, don't behead schoolgirls and don't call for exterminating infidels." I'm just not sure they wouldn't if they had the chance and backing of their governments.
I wanted to also mention that this individual was in college and has since become a very successful business man in Los Angeles, married another Jewish Iranian Christian, and is doing just fine. Definitely NOT insane.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon briefly opened his eyes Monday in response to a recording of his grandson's voice, relatives told doctors, though hospital officials warned there were no signs that the comatose Israeli leader was any closer to regaining consciousness. With Sharon still incapacitated 12 days after a massive stroke, Monday's media excitement over the reported eye movements showed how even the slightest change in his condition is capturing the nation's attention.
The 77-year-old prime minister has been lying unconscious at Hadassah Hospital since the Jan. 4 stroke. Although doctors say his condition remains "critical but stable," outside experts have said Sharon's failure to regain consciousness in recent days bodes poorly for his recovery. Monday's reports seemed to spark hopes that Sharon, perhaps the country's ultimate political survivor, would prove the experts wrong again. After scaling back coverage of his condition in recent days, TV newscasts and radio programming eagerly reported the latest developments.
Israeli TV said the prime minister opened his eyes as his son, Gilad, sat at his bedside playing a tape recording of Sharon's grandson. A Sharon aide in touch with the family said the report was accurate. The aide spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not at Sharon's bedside at the time. The Yediot Ahronot newspaper reported on its Web site that Sharon opened his eyes twice, becoming teary at the sound of his grandson's voice. It said Sharon closed his eyes before doctors reached his room.
The heavy media interest prompted the hospital to issue a statement playing down the reports. It said Sharon's relatives reported "impression of eyelid movement whose significance is unclear." Outside medical experts warned against reading too much into the reported eye movements. "I would take nothing from it," said Dr. Maurizio Miglietta, a coma expert at New York University's School of Medicine, especially because there were no other signs of reported progress Monday. "It can be anything from him waking up to having a seizure, or it could be involuntary," he said. The next thing to look for would be "purposeful movements," such as responding to voices, Miglietta added.
Dr. Anthony Rudd, a stroke specialist at St. Thomas' Hospital in London, said coma patients often involuntarily flutter their eyelids or even open their eyes momentarily. "Often families misinterpret reflex twitching for voluntary movement," he said.
After the stroke, Sharon underwent three operations to stop the bleeding in his brain. Medical officials said last week that he showed some movement on both sides of his body in response to pain stimuli, but he has shown no signs of improvement since then. Doctors have given little insight into his prognosis. Sharon has been on a respirator, and he underwent a tracheotomy Sunday in which surgerons inserted a plastic tube in his windpipe to help him breathe. He has been taken off sedatives.
Sharon's Kadima Party enjoyed a strong lead in opinion polls at the time of the stroke, and analysts warned the party might disintegrate without its founder and leader. But under acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Kadima has strengthened its lead. With Sharon unlikely to return, Kadima on Monday chose Olmert to stand in as party leader in the March 28 election. The decision put Olmert in a strong position to be the next prime minister.
January 17, 2006: The U.S. Department of Defense has decided to make the next generation heavy bomber an unmanned aircraft. The Department of Defense also wants the new aircraft in service by the end of the next decade, some twenty years ahead of schedule. At the same time, the current combat UAV program (J-UCAS, run by the air force and navy) is to be changed as well. The current X45 project will be split up, with the air force and navy allowed to develop a shorter range combat aircraft to suit their particular needs. These will be bombers, with some air-to-air capabilities. The X45 was meant mainly for those really dangerous bombing missions, early on, when enemy air defenses have to be destroyed. But the Pentagon finally got hip to the fact that the J-UCAS developers were coming up with an aircraft that could replace all current fighter-bombers. This was partly because of the success of the X45 in reaching its development goals, and the real-world success of the Predator (in finding, and attacking, targets) and Global Hawk (in finding stuff after flying half way around the world by itself.)
The X45 program started out, two years ago, as a DARPA research project. But last Fall, it was taken from DARPA and given to the air force, with orders to move as quickly as possible. At that time, the plan was to build the X45C version and get it through all the tests needed to certify it for combat. At the time, it was thought another four years would be needed to do that. Now, no one is sure it will take that long.
The X45A has passed tests with formation flying, and dropping a JDAM (actually the new 250 pound SDB version). The X45C will carry eight SDB (250 pound small diameter bombs), or up to 4500 pounds of other JDAMs. The X45A has already shown it can fly in formation and refuel in the air. The X45C will weigh in at about 19 tons, have a 2.2 ton payload and be 39 feet long (with a 49 foot wingspan.) The X-45A, built for development only, is 27 feet long, has a wingspan of 34 feet and has a payload of 1.2 tons. The X-45C will be able to hit targets 2,300 kilometers away and be used for bombing and reconnaissance missions. Each X-45C will probably cost about $30 million, depending on how extensive, and expensive, its electronic equipment will be.
The one topic no one wants to touch at the moment is air-to-air. This appears to be the last job left for pilots of combat aircraft. (cough) close-air-support (cough) The geeks believe they have this one licked, and are giving the pilot generals the, âbring it onâ look. The generals are not keen to test their manned aircraft against a UAV, but this will change the minute another country, like China or Russia, demonstrates that they are seriously moving in that direction.
Posted by: Steve ||
01/17/2006 09:29 ||
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#4
Without pilots, all sorts of weird possibilities come to mind about heavy bombers. For example, a B-52 was notorious for using almost half its fuel just to get off the ground. So if there's no rush for a heavy bomber launch, why not hoist it up with a dirigible? That is, lift it high up, then start its engines, and it flies away, at altitude, on its own power.
Sounds silly, I know, until you calculate out the greater range before it needs refueling. Right now, bombers are restricted in their use by the availability of refueling aircraft in the vicintity. So maybe it isn't such a ludicrous idea after all.
#5
The X45 program started out, two years ago, as a DARPA research project. But last Fall, it was taken from DARPA and given to the air force, with orders to move as quickly as possible. At that time, the plan was to build the X45C version and get it through all the tests needed to certify it for combat. At the time, it was thought another four years would be needed to do that. Now, no one is sure it will take that long.
Good move getting it out of DARPA. Bad move not setting a schedule or timeline i.e., orders to move as quickly as possible. I can hear blue-suiter chuckles and yawns from the "back 9."
#6
I think the pilots should embrace UAV's in an air to air role, as a supplement. Without the life support systems, etc, the UAV's are a lot cheaper, therefore they could be allotted say, two air to air capable UAV's. Send them in first, let the bad guys use up their missiles and break their formations, then tallyho! Almost none of our fighters engage in ONLY air to air missions, so this would let the manned aircraft preserve missiles and fuel to head to the kind of targets (say an office complex in a built up area) that require human judgement on the spot. One question though, for the geeks, do we have enough satellite bandwidth available to support a whole bunch of these? Seems I recall some trouble with that during the late unpleasantness in Iraq.
Posted by: colin macdougall ||
01/17/2006 13:20 Comments ||
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#7
The Army is already in the process of moving operational control/flying of tactical UAVs to Aviation branch from Military Intel.
There will be plenty of UAVs to go around, some armed, some not, some tactical some (like Global Hawk) for longer-mission surveillance.
#8
So if there's no rush for a heavy bomber launch, why not hoist it up with a dirigible? That is, lift it high up, then start its engines, and it flies away, at altitude, on its own power.
It is speed who keeps a plane flying. Your bomber would be at zero speed and it would immediately go unto a vertical dive, possibly in a spinning vertical dive. It would be tricky to regain control with a fighter, impossible in a bomber who are quite simply not designed for taking the required Gs for trasiting to horizontal flight before hitting ground. Notice that the above assumes the plane is going down nose first. Chances are high it would go on a flat spin or in a tail first dive and then even an F16 would crash
Posted by: t zero ||
01/17/2006 13:36 Comments ||
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#9
Also consider the size of the dirigible. Likely would need to be roughly 29 times the size of the Hindenburg. That number is off the top of my head, but it feels right.
#10
While dirigibles might not provide optimum static launch characteristics, catapults certainly could. Given reinforced airframes and high-G hardened avionics, our new generation of electromagnetic catapults could slingshot these puppies into the air at accelerations that would make most pilots black out. With the catapult doing most of the heavy lifting, critical jet fuel is saved and deployment happens even more quickly. I smell a major win-win.
#11
t zero and zenster: both good points. The design and use of aircraft without pilots really opens up the imagination. So much more is possible. Planes with almost ballistic missile trajectories. Very small, very fast, very maneuverable.
But since most flying is done for logistics rather than combat, imagine also a drone, much like a Huey in size/cargo, that could perform similar missions. Something similar to a Jolly Green Giant, for bus-sized cargoes, etc.
#13
Although the original purpose of the UAV bomber (i.e., softening up inbound anti-aircraft defenses) is laudable, one also needs to consider the use of hypersonic missiles that will be able to address global targets within a few hours. While not able to loiter, their cost of assembly and operation is significantly less.
I especially like the idea of a bunker busting conventional warhead impacting at several times the speed of sound. Such a missile should be able to burrow quite a distance, as in Iranian underground facilities.
#15
It might be far more practical to have launched sub-orbital vehicles to deploy "space based weapons", than to have orbital platforms to do so.
The idea being that from a sub-orbital altitude, they would first maneuver into a very steep attitude, then use their engines to rapidly descend towards the target area. Then, with minor attitude adjustments, they could aim at multiple targets and fire solid projectiles with a rail gun. This would get the projectiles up to speed while reducing atmospheric friction on them, so less would burn off before impact.
Instead of attempting deep penetration with the "rods of god", many projectiles could be used like a gigantic cluster bomb over a wide area, resulting in something like a dense meteorite shower of grapefruit sized objects obliterating most targets over perhaps a ten square mile area.
A Los Alamos scientist described using a rail gun to move a cannonball sized chunk of ferrous metal at speeds that "made it seem to simply rematerialize at the other side of the room."
#17
Instead of attempting deep penetration with the "rods of god", many projectiles could be used like a gigantic cluster bomb over a wide area, resulting in something like a dense meteorite shower of grapefruit sized objects obliterating most targets over perhaps a ten square mile area.
♪ make those grapefruits robotic and I think you're on to somrthing Moose. ♪
»;-)
Posted by: Red Dog ||
01/17/2006 19:17 Comments ||
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I put this on page 2 because I don't believe there is such a thing as a German 'tourist' in Iran.
FRANKFURT â A German tourist arrested after his boat allegedly strayed into Iranian waters has been sentenced to 18 months in prison, his wife said yesterday. Donald Klein, a 52-year-old sculptor, and a French friend were arrested on November 29 and put on trial for entering Iranian territorial waters during a fishing trip in the Straits of Hormuz.
"Wonder if the trout are biting in the Straits this morning, Fráncóise?"
"I dunno, Donald, let's go find out!"
Kleinâs wife, Karin, said yesterday that the German Foreign Ministry had informed her of his sentence. Ministry officials had no immediate comment on her account. Iranian officials have said that the two men are healthy and have been visited by consular officials from their embassies.
The Kleins and their French friend had been vacationing in the UAE. It was unclear whether the Frenchman had received a similar sentence.
Nah, he got professional courtesy.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/17/2006 23:37 ||
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(IsraelNN.com) In an interview with the German weekly Der Spiegel this week, former Syrian Vice-President Abdelhalim Khaddam asserted that the regime of Bashar Al-Assad in Syria is about to collapse. Accordingly, Khaddam is preparing the foundation for a government-in-exile from his Paris residence. Regarding the Assad regime, Khaddam told Der Spiegel: "The fall has begun. I do not think the regime will survive this year."
Fred has money on it
As for the potential members of his exile government, Khaddam said, "I would not exclude any political group as long as it respects the democratic process," including Islamists and Ba'athists.
Posted by: Steve ||
01/17/2006 12:27 ||
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who grabs power? what do they do to get syrians to support them (hint: it involves Israel and the USA on the "hate" side, and Iran on the "love" side).
#5
If Syria does go kaflooey, hopefully it will have a window of utter disorganization, but not violent chaos. Enough of a window for the hard-corps diplomats to mosey in and get the horse trading going on.
France, Iran and Russia will want them to continue to be a dictatorship, bless their rotten little hearts; but the US and Britain will connive to get them moving towards a greater plurality, hopefully ending in a democracy. Asking the UN in would help this a lot, at least reducing a lot of the hanky-panky; so they would be useful fools while we worked our works.
The name of Lebanon's Christian Maronite Patriarch, Butros Nasrallah Sfeir appears on a hit-list uncovered by a UN commission probing the assassination of former Lebanese premier Rafik Hariri, according to a well-placed political source in Beirut. Speaking on condition of anonymity the source told Adnkronos International (AKI) that publisher Gibran Tueni killed in a 12 December bomb blast in Beirut also appeared on the the list which was submitted by the former head of the UN panel, Detlev Mehlis to the Lebanese authorities. "I saw with my own eyes the letter signed by Mehlis [containing the hit list]. Gibran Tueni himself showed it during the first days of August [2005] following his return from Saudi Arabia where he had conveyed his condolences for the death of [Saudi] King Fahd. Besides Tueni another name which appeared on the list was that of Nasrallah Sfeir the Maronite Patriach, " the source said.
Three different hit lists have surfaced in the Lebanese media in recent months. The last one which appeared on 13 January contained the names of several celebrity talk-show hosts and well-known anti-Syrian politicians including Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, his close aide and Lebanon's current Telecommunications minister, Marwan Hamade, Democreatic Left parliamentarian Elias Atallah, Social Affairs minister Nayla Muawad and Hariri's son, Saad ad-Din Hariri. All of those on the list were prominent in the wave of anti-Syrian demonstrations that took place in Lebanon after the killing of Hariri and 20 others in a bomb attack in Beirut on 14 February 2005.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/17/2006 10:47 ||
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Tehran, 17 Jan. (AKI) - Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Tuesday scrapped a ban on the US-based Cable News Network (CNN) a day after the channel was told to leave Iran for its misrepresentation of the president's remarks. Ahmadinejad was quoted by the IRNA newsagency as saying in a letter sent to Iran's Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance that CNN be allowed to resume its activities in view of its caving in to threats apology.
"We believe that accurate dissemination of news and information is necessary for political growth and awareness as well as effective interaction among nations in today's world, and the media are the main sources of disseminating useful information," Ahmadinejad said. "Taking into account CNN's apology, we are asking that the channel be allowed to resume its activities, although we maintain the view that the news it has broadcast was contrary to professional ethics of journalism which requires truthful dissemination of news in the interest of all," he added.
Don't we wish
On Saturday, Ahmadinejad said at a press conference that the peaceful use of nuclear energy is a right which Iran cannot be denied, but in CNN's live coverage, his remarks were interpreted into that "the use of nuclear weapons is Iran's right."
On Monday, the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance imposed a ban on CNN journalists' activities in Iran, terming the mistakes against professional ethics, but the ministry also said that any revision in the decision "depends on the performance of CNN in future." Once it realised Admadinejad had been misquoted, CNN officially apologised and clarified the matter, according to IRNA.
But Iran still imposed the ban, insisting that CNN's mistake was unforgivable. IRNA argued in a Monday report that CNN's chief correspondent to Tehran Christiane Amanpour, who was present at the conference, was born in Iran and knows the Persian language well.
Boy, this is a tough one, who to believe, CNN or Iran?
Posted by: Steve ||
01/17/2006 08:28 ||
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#1
remembered who their friends were, huh? Wonder what CNN promised this time to regain access. b*stards
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/17/2006 9:11 Comments ||
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#2
Same deal Saddam got. We don't negotiate with terrorist regimes.
A POTENTIAL breakthrough in the nuclear stand-off with Iran came last night when the Iranian ambassador in Moscow praised a proposal to move Tehran's uranium enrichment programme to Russia.
Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, said last night that his position is "very close" to that of the United States and Britain. And it appeared that he could hold the key to a resolution when Iran's ambassador to Russia, Gholamreza Ansari, welcomed an offer to move the Iranian uranium enrichment programme to Russia.
Such a move would mean Iran, which is developing a missile which could reach Israel, could not acquire enough material for a bomb. "As far as Russia's proposal is concerned, we consider it constructive and are carefully studying it. This is a good initiative to resolve the situation. We believe that Iran and Russia should find a way out of this jointly," said Mr Ansari.
Mr Putin emerged from separate talks with Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, saying he was treating the situation with caution - but he in no way condoned Iran's decision to break the seals from its uranium enhancement plants a fortnight ago. "We need to move very carefully in this area. I personally do not allow myself a single careless announcement and do not allow the foreign ministry to make a single uncertain step," Mr Putin said. "We must work on the Iranian problem very carefully, not allowing abrupt, erroneous steps."
This just allows the dance to continue. It doesn't solve the basic problem -- Iran wants nuclear weapons so that it can own nuclear-tipped intercontinental and intermediate-range missiles. Whether it's to obliterate Israel, push its neighbors around or insulate itself from Western pressure, it's just unacceptable. If what Putin is doing is giving himself a fig leaf for future use -- "they rejected our reasonable proposal, so now we are forced to vote against Iran in the Security Council" -- well and good. But I suspect it's being done so that when the US/UK says this is unacceptable, he can then block UNSC action.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/17/2006 00:58 ||
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#1
AGREED - Russia's and China's own history in antiquity shows that neither Moscow nor Beijing will ever tolerate any lessor power capable of challenging them or destroying them. Iran = North Korea's ultimate utility is to frighten and intimidate Clinton-led America unto anti-American anti-sovereign American Socialism, besides of course the usual geopol econ concessions. China will never allow NorKor to possess any independent nuke arsenal sufficient enough to destroy or challenge Beijing, and neither will it nor Russia allow a host of Iran-style nuke Islamic "wild cards" on their peripheries. Iran-NK , etal are safe from Russia-China as long as the USA, and afterwards NATO-EU, is the main target. OTOH, ONLY THE USA HAS GMD - Russia-China knows that Dubya & Company knows that the sword tip of a poten nuclear "wild card" Iran, etc. also points ags them. DUBYA > HOW LONG CAN RUSSIA-CHINA WAIT FOR A US-IRANIAN = US-NORKOR =... WAR(S) BEFORE THEY MOVE TO PROTECT THEIR AMBITIONS FOR NEW HEGEMONY.
#2
This is what I would do, say yes to the deal, then just screw on them down the road. And I'd say that is what Iran is doing too. Buying themselves a little breathing room. We have just managed to prolong this crisis for another several years so that Iran can enrich in secret or extract plutonium from the spent fuel rods in a last minute deal breaker.
#3
I dont think the US and UK will say this is unacceptable - and I dont think Russia will vote for sanctions as a first step in any case. They dont even seem to be completely on board as voting for referral to the UNSC yet. If the Iranians reject this, then that does give Putin cover to suppor the West and thats good. The bad is if the Iranians use this to drag things out, arguing over the details of the Putin proposal for months, then rejecting it. And if in the meanwhile the UNSC has dithered. Which gets to the question of just how close Iran IS to a bomb, and how much it a lost few months (while they enrich) costs us.
Egypt on Monday said it supported using nuclear technology for peaceful purposes but rejected the emergence of a nuclear military power in the region, in its first official reaction to the standoff over Iran's nuclear program. "All countries should adhere to their commitments in a way to allow the international community to be sure of the peaceful nature of the Iranian nuclear program, as we do not accept the emergence of a nuclear military power," Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit said in a statement.
Aboul Gheit said Egypt was "closely watching" the development of the Iranian nuclear issue "out of its absolute keenness to support all the efforts aimed at consolidating the nuclear nonproliferation (policy) not only at the regional level but all over the world." He said Egypt believes dialogue is the best way to solve the crisis.
So the Egyptians don't like and won't accept it, but also won't do anything about it other than talk.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/17/2006 00:55 ||
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#1
It stems way back in antiquity to INTER-ISLAMIC DEBATE AND CONFLICT over which nation or region should dominate Islam as Islam's SOLE centre of power and influence, i.e. EGYPT vs PERSIA vs TURKEY vs SYRIA vs ARABIA vs MUSLIM INDIA, etc.
The mother of Ahmad Abu Adas, the Palestinian who claimed responsibility for the murder of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri in a videotaped message shown on al Jazeera in February last year, was surprised to discover her sonâs name was mentioned in relation to a suspected terrorist cell. Members of the al Qaeda-linked group were arrested in Lebanon earlier this month and are currently being questioned for planning to carry out terrorist acts. âI do not understand why some media organizations have claimed that Ahmad was brainwashed and recruited by Khaled Tah who is connected to the terrorist cell. Ahmad was not recruited by any group or political party. But it appears that some people are circulating totally fabricated news about him.â
She cautioned that it was important to await the results of the investigation before making any accusations about Ahmad. âKhaled Tah stopped seeing Ahmad a year before he disappeared. They didnât know each other very well. All I know about the matter I read in the report by the German UN investigator Detlev Mehlis. Tah is said to have entered Lebanon on 15 January 2005 and left the following day, the same day Ahmad disappeared. I am unable to determine the connection between what happened to my son and what the report includes. â
Nuhad indicated she had never met Tah and added that Ahmad spent his time with friends from school and the neighborhood. âStrangers or anyone else I could suspect of belonging to al Qaeda never came to the house. The only stranger was the unidentified young man that Ahmad met a few months before he disappeared. He called on Ahmad on 16 January under the pretext he wanted him to accompany him to a rented apartment in the area.â
Holding a picture of her son, taken a week before he disappeared, Nuhad said with bitterness, âThe whole matter is made-up. We all know how Rafik Hariri was assassinated. I hope that Ahmadâs name is not mentioned in issues related to al Qaeda. Itâs been a year [since he disappeared] and I do not know what happened to my son. I am desperate for information on his fate. If he has been killed, I want to retrieve his body in order to bury him and get accustomed to the idea of loosing him. After all this agony and the death of his father because of what we were subjected to after he appeared on TV, thin and almost ill, despite leaving us in good health, today there are attempts to connect his name to a terrorist cell. I do not even know if itâs related to al Qaeda.â
âThe aim is to make Ahmad a suspect again. Perhaps he is no longer with us to defend himself. My son believed that a Muslim does not hurt another Muslim. He did not call for jihad but wished all Muslims would unite and that every Muslim could learn about his religion in a simple manner, especially the young,â she added.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/17/2006 00:00 ||
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*A package arrives at the Adas home. As it is unwrapped, Ahmad's mmother discovers a splodeydope vest with a mackerel in it*
MOTHER: What does this mean?
NEIGHBOR: It means Ahmad sleeps with the fishes...
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
01/17/2006 8:30 Comments ||
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The United States and European Union were seeking Russian and Chinese support for robust diplomatic steps to curb Iran's nuclear program in talks among UN Security Council powers that began on Monday. Iran's resumption of research that could advance a quest for civilian atomic energy or bombs has sparked a flurry of Western diplomacy in pursuit of a vote by the UN nuclear watchdog to refer Iran to the Council for possible sanctions. Moscow, with a $1 billion stake building Iran's first atomic reactor, and Beijing, reliant on Iranian oil for its surging economy, have previously blocked such a move at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) board of governors. But Russia has warned Iran it could lose Moscow's support unless it suspended the fuel research it resumed last week. China, however, said resorting to the Security Council might "complicate the issue," citing Iran's threat to hit back by halting snap UN inspections of its atomic plants.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/17/2006 00:00 ||
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#1
Wipe out Israel off the Map + Permanent [Global] Jihad] + Islam = Iran will Rule The World, etc = looks like the world is either at another pre WW2 MUNICH; or in the alt Hollywood is about to make another 1973 = 1974 = 1975 = 1977, etc. ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN. Ala BROKEBACK/MARLBORO MAN-GATE, the USA already have our updated version of RHINESTONE COWBOY - since Anniston + COstner > THE GRADUATE/DELIVERANCE, all we need now to prove IRAQ = VIETNAM = QUAGMIRE is remakes and updates of LITTLE BIG MAN, DOG DAY AFTERNOON, and PLANET OF THE APES or BILLY JACK, etc. Fat Kimmie and NorKor > SOLYENT GREEN and RETURN OF SOLYENT GREEN. Lets all appease the Commies and Spetzlamists and equate Kimmie > BRUCE LEE versus those damned Chinese = Japanese, or Japn= Chinese, ala FIST OF FURY.
Michel Aoun, the Lebanese Christian leader, has launched a scathing attack on Syria's exiled former vice-president, accusing him of bearing responsibility for a string of assassinations. On Saturday, Aoun called on Abdel-Halim Khaddam, an ex-Baath Party stalwart turned whistleblower who last month implicated Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, in the murder of Rafiq al-Hariri, the former Lebanese prime minister, to publicly explain the killings.
"Khaddam was for a long time responsible for the Lebanese file, and during the time that he was responsible there were many very unfortunate events which were similar to Hariri's assassination," Aoun told Dubai television. Long the architect of Syria's military and political domination of neighbouring Lebanon, Khaddam was entrusted with the Lebanese file during Lebanon's 1975-1990 civil war. "There were the (assassinations) of two presidents of the republic, Bashir Gemayel and Rene Moawad, and there was the (Sunni) mufti Sheikh Hassan Khaled, MP Nazem Al-Qadri ... and Kamal Jumblatt," said Aoun. Aoun, who returned to Lebanon in May 2005 after 15 years in exile in France, added: "We had hoped that he would recall those days and let us know how these events took place."
Posted by: Fred ||
01/17/2006 00:00 ||
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Iran has banned CNN journalists from working in the country after the broadcaster misquoted President Ahmadinejad as saying Iran wanted nuclear weapons, the ISNA students news agency said. CNN's simultaneous translation of Ahmadinejad's lengthy news conference on Saturday included the phrase "the use of nuclear weapons is Iran's right". In fact, what the Iranian president said was that "Iran has the right to nuclear energy", the official IRNA news agency reported. CNN later apologised for its mistake.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/17/2006 00:00 ||
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#1
Yep, just because Marvin Martian wants to blow up the Earth + Moon, or ISRAEL, wid a little PU286 Explosive Space Modulator-r-r doe NOT make the modulator-r-r a weapon, D *** You. Delays, delays.
#2
Now pay attention Karl. See, don't whine. Just kick their (8!!87&^%(*9! asses out of the White House new corps and they'll come crying back apologizing. Its not like there are any other agencies to cover the room, so its not an assault upon a 'free press'. Hell make a seat for a blogger. You see CNN paid Saddam to carry his good news everything is happy air fillers. You see they apologize for their mistake here because they want access. Start restricting their access and competition kicks in. They start to play nice. Learn.
US counter-terrorism ambassador Henry Crumpton has told the BBC that the al-Qaeda leader and his number two are believed to be in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region.
"We have no intelligence or evidence that indicates that he [Bin Laden] is dead or incapacitated, so our working assumption is that he is still alive."
Al-Qaeda retained the aim of attacking the US, UK and Europe, he said.
Mr Crumpton told the BBC: "I am very confident we will at some point get al-Qaeda's leadership, and we believe they are in that area."
The ambassador added: "I should also note, no sign of life from Bin Laden, I think that reflects our collective success.
"I think and certainly hope that they are more concerned about staying alive than plotting the next 9/11."
But he warned: "Al-Qaeda and affiliated groups have a strategic aim of attacking the US homeland - that is their intent, we believe they are working toward that.
"I think also they intend to attack the UK again, and Europe."
Mr Crumpton also said the US did not "support, condone or engage in torture" of prisoners.
"Our efforts in counter-terrorism are complex, often secret, therefore that engenders some misunderstanding, some misperceptions, exaggerations."
But he added: "In terms of detainees and prisoners, information they provide is extraordinarily valuable - it has saved lives, it has stopped attacks in Europe and elsewhere."
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.
African civil society groups yesterday urged the AU not to elect Sudanese President Omar Bashir to head the 53-member body, arguing his governmentâs role in the conflict in the troubled western Darfur region should make him ineligible. Representatives of nearly 40 African non-governmental organizations dealing with human rights, health issues and conflict resolution said Bashirâs selection to lead the pan-African body would destroy its international credibility and crater ongoing AU-mediated Darfur peace talks.
Darfur's main rebel group yesterday rejected Khartoum's offer to deploy joint forces alongside African Union troops to curb the violence in the war-torn region of western Sudan. "The Sudan Liberation Movement rejects the Sudanese government's proposal ... and insists on the deployment of an international force," the rebel group said in a statement. The Sudanese Foreign Ministry had said that it proposed during a meeting in Addis Ababa of the African Union's Peace and Security Council the deployment of a tripartite force comprising troops from the government, the rebel movements and the AU. 
A submarine captain accused of bullying his officers told a court martial yesterday that some were so inexperienced it was like having lower division footballers on a Premiership pitch. Capt Robert Tarrant, 44, who was commander of the nuclear submarine Talent, told a court martial that he expected the very highest standards from his crew. He said he used a leadership style he had learned serving in the Falklands conflict. "I discovered that the margin of error between operational safety and therefore operational success and operational disaster was pretty small," he said. "From my perspective it came down to having the very highest standards of operational capability that one could have at all times. I learned that if you were trying to train during an operation it is too late. In the Falklands we had a captain who had served in the Korean war and because he was an excellent leader we got through and we did well."
BISHKEK - Kyrgyzstan is seeking to sharply increase, to 50 million dollars (41.4 million euros) a year, the amount the United States pays for an airbase supporting its troops in Afghanistan, parliament speaker Omurbek Tekebayev said late Monday.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Il arrived 
Richard Cheney, the US vice-president, has left Washington for Egypt and Saudi Arabia where he will hold talks with the leaders of both countries about the war in Iraq and regional security, among other things. On Tuesday, the US vice-president is scheduled to meet Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, officials said on Sunday. No other details of the talks have been publicly released, but an administration official told AFP that "peace and democracy in the Middle East - I think that is going to be the general focus of him going there."
NEW DELHI - The dispute over Kashmir and measures to build confidence between nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan were the focus on Tuesday of their third round of talks in a sweeping peace process, officials said.
Pakistan's Islamist opposition has vowed more protests against a US air strike that killed at least 18 civilians while commentators said the raid would boost support for fighters. The air strike which took place on Friday was apparently aimed at aimed at Osama bin Ladin's deputy and al-Qaida's second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri. 
Iraqi judge Said al Hamashi will preside over the high-profile trial of Saddam Hussein, along with seven former senior officials, in the Dujail case. He will replace Judge Rezkar Mohammed Amin who tended his resignation on Saturday. "I have nothing to do with the reasons that drove my colleague Judge Amin to resign. I hope he returns to his post and preside over the remaining court sessions," he told Asharq Al Awsat from Baghdad . If Judge Amin "insisted on resigning, I will preside over the next session as planned, as there is no need for it to be postponed," al Hamashi said. Al Amin was said to have resigned because of from government pressure The trial is due to resume on 24 January.
The United States has warned the Palestinians that inclusion of the resistance group Hamas in any new government could affect US-backed efforts to establish an independent Palestinian state. Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state on Monday stopped short of threatening a cut in US aid to the Palestinians if they form a government with ministers from the hard-line Islamic movement after parliamentary polls on 25 January. "Let's just see what happens after the elections," Rice told reporters accompanying her on a visit to Liberia. 
Palestinian Interior Minister 
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon briefly opened his eyes Monday in response to a recording of his grandson's voice, relatives told doctors, though hospital officials warned there were no signs that the comatose Israeli leader was any closer to regaining consciousness. With Sharon still incapacitated 12 days after a massive stroke, Monday's media excitement over the reported eye movements showed how even the slightest change in his condition is capturing the nation's attention.
The name of Lebanon's Christian Maronite Patriarch, 
The United States and European Union were seeking Russian and Chinese support for robust diplomatic steps to curb Iran's nuclear program in talks among UN Security Council powers that began on Monday. Iran's resumption of research that could advance a quest for civilian atomic energy or bombs has sparked a flurry of Western diplomacy in pursuit of a vote by the UN nuclear watchdog to refer Iran to the Council for possible sanctions. Moscow, with a $1 billion stake building Iran's first atomic reactor, and Beijing, reliant on Iranian oil for its surging economy, have previously blocked such a move at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) board of governors. But Russia has warned Iran it could lose Moscow's support unless it suspended the fuel research it resumed last week. China, however, said resorting to the Security Council might "complicate the issue," citing Iran's threat to hit back by halting snap UN inspections of its atomic plants.
Iran has banned CNN journalists from working in the country after the broadcaster misquoted President Ahmadinejad as saying Iran wanted nuclear weapons, the ISNA students news agency said. CNN's simultaneous translation of Ahmadinejad's lengthy news conference on Saturday included the phrase "the use of nuclear weapons is Iran's right". In fact, what the Iranian president said was that "Iran has the right to nuclear energy", the official IRNA news agency reported. CNN later apologised for its mistake.
