France will hold a national day of remembrance for the victims of slavery every 10 May, President Jacques Chirac has announced. The date for the annual holiday was chosen as it marks the day in 2001 when France passed a law recognising slavery as a crime against humanity.
He said children should be taught accept the guilt of about slavery at primary and secondary school as part of the national curriculum. He said UN figures suggest more than 20 million people were in slavery today.
"Slavery fed racism," he said. "When people tried to justify the unjustifiable, that was when the first racist theories were elaborated. Slave labour exists in one form or another on almost every continent today
Jacques Chirac
"Racism is a crime of the heart and the spirit... which is why the memory of slavery remains a living wound for some of our fellow citizens and we must keep those wounds festering."
Mr Chirac said he would propose a "European and international initiative" to tackle any company still using slave labour....as we, the proud and enlightened French define it.
"We must ensure that when western companies invest in poor or emerging countries they respect basic labour rules such as have been lain out in international law," he said.
Earlier this month, Mr Chirac said a controversial law on the teaching of France's colonial past would be overturned, and the authors guillotined if found. The law requires teachers to stress positive aspects of French colonialism, especially in north Africa.
#1
Go study who where the leaders in ending the practice of slavery in the 19th Century. Slavery which is still alive in practice in the Sudan today. Those reformers, both individual and national, should be celebrated. Celebration not recrimination, in humankinds slow but consistant struggle to raise above the primal behaviors of the past.
From Kathryn Cramer ??, but Robert Young Pelton freelanced in Afgranstan for CNN
I received this interesting article from Robert Young Pelton, author of The World's Most Dangerous Places, via email this morning. I gather it is under Creative Commons License; I present it here in its entirety. Much of this is previously unreleased material. Its appearance here may well be its first publication. The transcript of Pelton's original interview, plus video clips, with Lindh appear on the CNN website. This is his eye-witness account of Lindh's capture, in response to a recent campaign for clemency:
The Truth about John Walker Lindh
by Robert Young Pelton
Robert Young PeltonJohn Walker Lindh aka John Walker aka Suleiman Ferris aka Abdul Hamid aka The American Taliban is a person that I will mostly likely to be associated for some time to come. I am sure on my obituary there will be a bombastic note that I was the journalist who discovered Lindh after the battle at Qali Jangi (the afghans have that dubious honor) Many have told me that Lindhs story was a big deal back in the States. I will never know. I was in Afghanistan covering combat operations with in the ongoing war against the Taliban for CNN so I will never have the chance to the get the full impact of finding an American professing his love for the Taliban.
To me Lindh was just an unpleasant arrogant kid who preferred to stay with his murdering friends. He was, in fact, the second Irish-American Jihadi I have met and interviewed. The first one was a one-legged psychopath who had been trained in the same camps and had fought in Kashmir, Kosovo, Bosnia, Chechnya and Liberia gave me his opinion. When I called him to discuss Lindhs hejira, Aqil Collins simply called Lindh a pussy. When I returned from Afghanistan I was quite aware of the outrage he had caused. In a deliberate effort not to influence his pending case, I did only interviews in which I spoke positively about Lindh.
Privately I warned his lawyers to keep me off the witness stand because I would send their little Johnny to prison. Wisely, Lindh copped a plea and I was spared months of inconvenience. Some people wanted a trial to get to the bottom of Lindhs nefarious activities, among them the grieving family of Mike Spann. Lindhs plea bargain denied them and the country of that truth finding.
So it was left to me to set the record straight. My decades of travels with jihadis and terrorists, my time with both the Taliban leadership, the Northern Alliance (aka the United Front), Dostums forces as well as my own time spent during and after talking to the players involved with Qali Jangi lead me to believe that I am uniquely qualified to pass judgment on Lindh and to accurately describe who he was and what he was doing there.
Now that Lindhs father has decided to wrongly blame me for his sons misery and seek clemency under false pretenses, I feel its time to reveal the truth.
Quite simply, in my opinion, Lindh was a terrorist, a member of what we call al Qaeda, and a man who chose to stay with killers even though he was afforded numerous opportunities to separate himself from his murderous associates. Twenty years in jail may be a blessing compared to how many of his friends have been dealt with since.
Frank Lindh cannot be blamed either for the emotions behind his need to reinvent history or for doing what he can to get his son out of jail. But he is lying. His son did not love America: He fought for bin Laden, against us. His son is not honest: He lied to his parents and others. His son is not a decent young man: He trained to be a murderer. His son went to kill strangers in a stranger land. A spiritual quest? What part of grenades and AK 47s can be described as spiritual? What part of patriotism is eating bin Ladens food, listening to Usamas droning hate-filled speeches against America, and sitting obediently within strangling distance of our greatest single enemy? Rest at site -- an insightful read
Privately I warned his lawyers to keep me off the witness stand because I would send their little Johnny to prison.
The American talaban should have been an example to all other propagandized LLL kids who think it would be OK to go saddle up with bunch of anti-American terrorist. Simply put he should have been tried quickly then executed on national TV. Key on Executed and Quickly whether that would have required special tribunal whatever it should have been done.
The example now is if you are a US citizen terrorist you get prison time meaning the next 20yrs or so you get to spend propagandizing your fellow prisoners. Brilliant take a known enemy trained in terrorism put him in a prison with hundreds of pissed of at the man prisoners who are criminals and just may just may bite.
#7
No, he should have been shot in the field upon capture as an illegal combatant - and that fact (and the fact that he was an illegal combatant and thus not under GC protections) widely publicized. This would show that A) the GC does not protect these creatures, and B) this isn't a game - there is no 'start over'....
Now the LLL thinks that terrorists and murders deserve GC protection. A very bad precedent has been set.
#8
Robert Young Pelton is great, read "Three Worlds Gone Mad". Pelton travels into Grozny, Chechnya at the height of the Russian invasion there in '99. This guy has balls.
#9
bgrebel9---I read Pelton's book, too. Bottom line, what he said about Chechnya---There is no hope there, says it all. Pelton went into the heart of the beast of Chechnya and got back OK. A French reporter was kidnapped for a year and a half (IIRC), and committed suicide after release.
I wish that the USAF obliterated those forces they had surrounded at Konduz. Mike Spann would still be alive today, instead of being killed by Johnny Jihad's buddies in arms at the castle at Mazar--Sharif.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
01/30/2006 21:43 Comments ||
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The Afghan authorities and the international community should reach out to the Taliban if they want to keep the political process on track, according to one of the chief architects of the troubled Islamic republics transition.
And now, the shakedown...
In an interview with the Financial Times, Lakhdar Brahimi, who retired from the United Nations late last year, described recent violence as a wake-up call and warned: The job is not done yet. His comments reflect concern that while the transition to a fully representative form of government, as laid down at the Bonn conference in late 2001, has run its course, there is no clear follow-up to keep the momentum going.
I think the international community has got to have a serious second plan, Mr Brahimi said. You need to recommit yourself for a number of years.
Underlying the difficulties was the fact that the Taliban, which ran the country before being dislodged by the US invasion in 2001, was not included in the Bonn process. That should change. They need to be brought in, he said. Mr Brahimi said somemembers of the Taliban were open to bribery dialogue and had cut ties to al-Qaeda. However, the government needed to address concerns that were winning the Taliban support.
Are the Talibs asking for hudna now that we wacked them inside Pak territory?
When things are going wrong you need to look also at yourself and whether some of the things you are doing are responsible. There is too much corruption, too much injustice, too much neglect, he said. This plays into the hands of the Taliban.
The Afghan government has approved a blueprint to build peace over the next five years, which will be presented to donors at the two-day conference this week in London. Abdullah Abdullah, the foreign minister, said the Afghanistan compact would lay out the framework for continued baksheesh international engagement with Afghanistan over the next five years.
Last week seven Taliban prisoners escaped from Afghanistans main jail. President Hamid Karzai also warned that the drugs trade was financing terrorism in the country. With that money, the enemies of Afghanistan make bombs . . . train suicide attackers . . . [and] carry out attacks on you, he said in Kabul. We should eliminate drugs from our country. If we dont, they will eliminate us.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/30/2006 03:36 ||
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Taliban may have cut off links to al-Qaeda, but the doctrinal ties are unbreakable. I smell al-Taqiyah.
#2
"...reach out to the Taliban... wake-up call and warned: The job is not done yet.
I agree we need to continue reaching out with a 7.62NATO wake-up call.
South African President Thabo Mbeki has congratulated the radical Hamas movement for winning this week's legislative elections in Palestine and also praised the moderate outgoing rulers, Fatah, for accepting the "freely expressed voice" of the people. In his regular internet column, ANC Today, Mbeki paid special tribute to Fatah and the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) -- led until his death in November 2004 by Yasser Arafat -- "with whom we have shared the same trench of struggle for many years"..... and probably the same illness. Balance of this kak at the link.
[Moderator note to Besoeker - try dumping your cookie cache and resetting with a new comment.]
Kuwait's parliament confirmed Sunday Prime Minister Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah as the new emir, ending an unprecedented political crisis which has divided the ruling family of the Gulf state.
Very quietly the Kuwaitis have had the equivalent of the Magna Carta in their country: the Parliament now rules supreme, even if the Amir doesn't yet realize it.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/30/2006 00:00 ||
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CARACAS (AFX) - Venezuela's government is investigating members of the armed forces for allegedly onpassing state secrets to the US military, officials said. The probe comes as state-run media reports claimed the US embassy in Caracas was also involved in the affair.
There's a lot of he-said, she-said, along with statements by Presidente-in-charge-of-Vice Rangel... plus this:
The vice president said the suspects included both active and retired members of the Venezuelan navy.
The state-run regional Telesur television network claimed US naval attache John Correa had bribed the suspects, and armed forces Inspector General Melvin Lopez Hidalgo also tied US diplomatic staff to the probe.
US Ambassador William Brownfield said Venezuelan authorities had not contacted him about the allegations.
Local media said 25 people were under investigation and that a relative of one of them was arrested, while military authorities on Sunday apparently searched the residences of several of the suspects.
Alonso Medina, a lawyer for one of the naval officers named as a suspect, said his client Plaza Lopez denied ever handing information to Correa, but said he knew the US official well as the two studied together in the US.
Is this the part of the "revolution" where any military officers with any contacts whatsoever with the pre-revolutionary Venezuela's allies all get prosecuted for spying? When did the retirees referred to retire?
Posted by: Phil ||
01/30/2006 19:23 ||
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But military officers, both current and former, should be the kind of people who actively object to Sr. Chavez's creeping fascism. That whole honour thing, and protecting the Constitution and all. But I rather imagine that Sr. Chavez would consider the regular armed forces to be a possible nexus of opposition, as he doesn't wholly own them. Classic totalitarian paranoia.
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) -- Cindy Sheehan, who gained international fame when she camped outside President Bush's ranch in an anti-war protest, plans to pitch her tent again, Venezuela's president said Sunday as he urged activists worldwide to help bring down "the U.S. empire." Hugo Chavez, an arm around Sheehan's shoulders, told a group of activists that she had told him "she is going to put up her tent again in front of Mr. Danger's ranch" in April.
Just in time for tornado season, I'll put in a call to Haliburton and get one on the schedule
If we can just get them to put up a few trailers you won't need to ...
In some of his strongest recent comments aimed at Washington, Chavez condemned the Bush administration and said his audience should work toward ending U.S. dominance. "Enough already with the imperialist aggression!" Chavez said, listing countries from Panama to Iraq where the U.S. military has intervened. "Down with the U.S. empire! It must be said, in the entire world: Down with the empire!"
Chavez said Sheehan had invited him to join her April protest at Bush's Crawford, Texas, ranch. Sheehan, whose 24-year-old soldier son Casey was killed in Iraq in 2004, held a vigil outside Bush's ranch during the president's vacation in August, attracting some 12,000 peace activists and reinvigorating the national anti-war movement. "Maybe I'll put up my tent also," Chavez said, to applause from an audience invited to his weekly broadcast on the final day of the World Social Forum, an annual gathering of anti-war and anti-globalization activists. Chavez said his government would help protest the war in Iraq by supporting a drive to gather petitions and delivering them to the U.S. Embassy in Caracas.
Chavez, who before the war in Iraq had friendly relations with Saddam Hussein, has been a frequent and strident critic of the war. Sheehan thanked Chavez for "supporting life and peace." She said earlier that she was impressed by his sincerity when they met privately on Saturday. "He said, 'Why don't I run for president?'" she said. "I just laughed."
Sheehan also noted that singer and activist Harry Belafonte recently called Bush "the greatest terrorist in the world," and said, "I agree with him. George Bush is responsible for killing tens of thousands of innocent people."
Also joining Chavez on Sunday was Elma Beatriz Rosado, the widow of slain Puerto Rican nationalist Filiberto Ojeda Rios. Holding back tears as she stood at Chavez's side, Rosado accused the United States of killing her husband, a 72-year-old militant terrorist independence activist. Rios was slain in a September FBI raid on a Puerto Rican farmhouse where he was living in hiding while being wanted for the 1983 robbery of $7.2 million from a Wells Fargo armored truck depot in Connecticut - funds intended for the terrorist independence cause. "They murdered him," Chavez said. "Viva Filiberto!... Let's follow his example."
#2
I think he has crossed the line into the realm of interference now. And mother Cindy has gone beyond protesting and is now in the sedition bracket. She even finds Feinstein too conservative for her taste. Sheesh!
There is little left of the Orthodox Church establishment in Chechnya. Most of Chechnya's ethnic Russian Christian minority fled in the early 1990s during the creation of Dzhokar Dudaev's independent Chechen state. The onset of war in 1994 found only the aged and the impoverished remaining of Grozny's Orthodox population, most of whom suffered greatly in the Russian bombing raids. Grozny's Church of the Archangel Mikhail, once a symbol of Orthodoxy's triumph in the Caucasus, is slowly being restored after its destruction by the Russian military in 1995. Reduced to a shell, its congregation consists today of a few hundred aged and hungry pensioners.
Yet Chechen warlord Shamyl Basaev announced the intention of the "Majlis of the Caucasian Front" to eliminate the "extremist activities" of the Russian Orthodox Church in the Caucasus until the end of the war. In an interview conducted January 9, 2006, Basaev described the church's leaders as 'satanists" and accused its clergy of being eager tools of Russian intelligence services (Kavkaz Center, January 9, 2006). The Orthodox Church is finished in Chechnya, but its continuing support for military action in the republic and its efforts at converting Muslims elsewhere in the Caucasus have brought it into conflict with the leadership of the Chechen insurgency.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/30/2006 04:09 ||
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It's pretty good, if you can read past the usual Jamestown Foundation efforts to split hairs between al-Qaeda and the Chechen Killer Korps ...
The recent killing of Saudi Sheikh Abu Omar Muhammad al-Sayf, a religious adviser to the Chechen resistance since 1995, heralded the demise of the first generation of Arab mujahideen in Chechnya. Their presence has had a profound effect upon the ongoing war in the Russian North Caucasus, with Chechnya widely viewed as another jihadi front controlled by al-Qaeda. The following aims to contextualize Chechnya's "Arab" fighters.
Chechen and North Caucasian links with the Middle East stretch back to Russian imperial history when these peoples migrated in the thousands to modern day Jordan, Turkey, Syria and Iraq. While in the latter three countries the Chechens were assimilated over time, in Jordan today there still exists a unique community of around 8,000 Chechens who have preserved their language and cultural traditions.
After 1990, dozens of Jordanian-Chechens traveled to see their newly independent homeland. Among them was Sheikh Ali Fathi al-Shishani, an elderly veteran of the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan and an ethnic Jordanian-Chechen. In 1993, Fathi formed a Salafi Islamic Jamaat consisting of scores of young indigenous Chechens and some Jordanian-Chechens. Following the onset of the Russo-Chechen war in December 1994, he was instrumental in facilitating the recruitment of Arab fighters from Afghanistan. Among those he personally invited was Samir Salih Abdallah al-Suwaylim, better known as "Khattab."
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Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/30/2006 03:52 ||
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Europe on Slippery Slope to Recognizing Hamas-ruled Palestinian Government
A DEBKAfile Special Analysis
January 30, 2006, 9:06 PM (GMT+02:00)
After a series of muddled statements and zigzags, wishful thinking prevailed in London and Brussels after all. The European Union, led by the Middle East Quartet, agreed to release financial aid to a Palestinian government taken over by a terrorist organization.
âWe give them three months to assess the situation. We donât want chaos and we want to go on with the peace process,â said EU foreign executive, Javier Solana at the end of the foreign ministersâ meeting in Brussels Monday, 30 Jan.
Hamas, which is responsible for at least 60 bombing attacks on Israelis and countless deaths, did not have to fight too hard or too long for a reversal of the short-lived boycott on funding, sparked by its election victory over Fatah with 74 seats in the 132 Palestinian Legislative Council.
The Islamist terrorists were not required to give up a single principle for the sake of Western aid.
After the Quartetâs decision, US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice left Europe for Kabul. At first, she tried urging the EU to stand by its pledge to withhold aid from the Palestinians until Hamas renounces terrorism. A few hours later, like her European colleages, she was saying two opposite things at once: The administration, she said, would follow through on aid promised to the current, US-backed Palestinian government led by President Mahmoud Abbas. But then, Rice went on to rule out any US financial assistance to an organization that advocates the destruction of Israel, advocates violence and refuses its obligations under an international framework for eventual Mideast peace.
The inference here is that Abbas, supported from Washington and Jerusalem, was responsible for Hamasâs participation in the Jan 25 election. So it was up to him to arrange things so as to enable West to send financial aid to the Palestinian people without violating its own laws and principles against terrorist organizations.
...
#1
If thay think these attacks are just coming out of the ME they are crazy. Plenty of help from the large group of moonbat TRANZI crackers and script kiddy wankers in the "west"
My solution, just kill the retards who do this stuff. This is something they will not "grow out of." It's the equivalent of defecating in the water supply.
Not sure whether we covered this, given the change-over to the new box and all, so apologies if we did. But this seems to cut the whole accusation of detention centers in Europe off at the knees.
STRASBOURG, France, Jan. 24 - An inquiry by the Council of Europe into allegations that the C.I.A. has operated secret detention centers in Eastern Europe has turned up no evidence that such centers ever existed, though the leader of the inquiry, Dick Marty, said there are enough "indications" to justify continuing the investigation.
The indications include lunch and his expense account ...
The report added, however, that it was "highly unlikely" that European governments were unaware of the American program of renditions, in which terrorism suspects were either seized in or transferred through Europe to third countries where they may have been tortured. Drawing from news reports, Mr. Marty contended that "more than a hundred" detainees have been moved anonymously and illegally through Europe under the program.
Got any names? Dates? Locations?
The findings, delivered to the Council on Tuesday, drew scornful reactions from some representatives of the Council's 46 member states, particularly from the British, who called the interim report "as full of holes as Swiss cheese" and "clouded in myth and motivated by a desire to kick America."
Since it didn't determine what it was supposed to determine ...
Mr. Marty, a Swiss senator and chairman of Council's Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights, was charged with the inquiry after an article in The Washington Post in November cited unidentified intelligence officials as saying that the C.I.A. had maintained detention centers in eight countries, including some in Eastern European democracies.
A subsequent report by Human Rights Watch cited Poland and Romania as two of those countries. Both countries, as well as others in Europe, have denied the allegations.
But that doesn't count ...
Mr. Marty's findings to date amount to little more than a compendium of press clippings. "It would seem from confidential contacts that the information revealed by The Washington Post, Human Rights Watch and ABC came from different sources, probably all well-informed official sources," a passage in the report reads. "This is clearly a factor that adds to the credibility of the allegations, since the media concerned have not simply taken information from one another."
Oh no, they'd never do that!
Part of the reason Mr. Marty finds the allegations credible are other well-documented cases of America's rendition of terrorism suspects on European soil, including the 2003 C.I.A. abduction of an Egyptian cleric, Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, who was sent to Egypt.
Mr. Marty said he was equally wary of Romanian and Polish denials of the detention center allegations, noting that both countries are part of the American-led coalition fighting in Iraq and "escaped long dictatorships thanks largely to the American intelligence services."
It's a concept called 'gratitude', of which you're not familiar.
He has requested data on aircraft movements from the Eurocontrol, the European air traffic control agency, and satellite images from the European Union's Satellite Center. It is not clear what he hopes to find in the data or photographs. His assertion that more than a hundred detainees have been moved through Europe - a number he took from an article in the German newspaper Die Zeit - is not of a scale that would show in satellite images.
Unless he's trying to count parked aircraft on different dates, and then assume that a 'CIA' plane at a certain airport at a certain date obviously had detainees inside, nope, nuttin' else, had to be detainees. I repeat, I'd be flying baby duck chow around just to confuse them.
Both Mr. Marty and the Council of Europe's secretary general, Terry Davies, are convinced that the American press knows more about the alleged detention centers, but are under government pressure to keep the information secret.
Pressure from the Bush administration works so well on the NYT, CBS and WaPo, we all know.
"I know of a television company that has information that they are not willing to broadcast out of concern for their employees," Mr. Davies said. He declined to identify the broadcaster or the source of the allegation.
Or what it said, or the threat made, or anything else that would lend the accusation, you know, credibility.
Mr. Davies is scheduled to issue a report in February on what the Council's member states have done to ensure that such breaches of the Council's European Convention on Human Rights do not occur. Mr. Marty is expected to issue a final report on his inquiry in March or April.
"This is no easy task," said John Sifton, terrorism researcher for Human Rights Watch. "The information doesn't fall out of the sky."
For now, though, there is nothing concrete to the allegations of secret prisons beneath the chatter. "At this stage of the investigations, there is no formal, irrefutable evidence of the existence of secret C.I.A. detention centers in Romania, Poland or any other country," Mr. Marty's report said.
That won't stop the accusations, of course.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/30/2006 00:00 ||
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Finally the CIA stops leaking. About time.
Posted by: Formerly Dan ||
01/30/2006 0:56 Comments ||
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Secret "prisons" in eastern europe I put right up their with UFO sightings.
Rendition flights happen with the full cooperation of the governmets concerned.
#3
Denis MacShane, Britain's former Europe minister who sits on the assembly, said: "The Marty report has more holes than a Swiss cheese there is nothing new, no proof, no witness statement, no document that justifies the claims made."
Osama bin Laden's offer of a truce has sunk from sight without leaving a ripple, but it should have made waves. When the audiotaped proposal was made 10 days ago, the White House dismissed it out of hand. That was a politically logical move, given the need to appear tough on terror at all times. An image of strength and determination may be particularly important in the months ahead because Republican Party leaders have put security issues at the heart of their 2006 congressional election campaign strategy.
But there are reasons why bin Laden's overture should be carefully weighed and thoughtfully debated.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/30/2006 03:26 ||
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Two hundred years ago, Thomas Jefferson bargained with the Barbary pirates (the Muslim terrorists of their day) while at the same time the Navy and Marines put military pressure on them.
Hold it.
First, Jefferson negotiated only because he really had no other choice. His SecTreas, Albert Gallatin had tried to actually disband the USN on the grounds that since we had won the naval war with France, we didn't need a Navy now, did we? Congress, BTW, supported Gallatin - it was only some last minute shenanigans by the outgoing Adams administration that saved the Navy and Marines at all.
Second, Congress was adamantly against any kind of serious military action against the Pirates - the handful of raids and attacks that did happen took place only after thoroughly embarassing incidents like the loss of the frigate Philadelphia (imagine the reaction if a modern missile cruiser was captured by the Iranians).
Third, the 'pressure' wasn't much - there was a leaky 'blockade' of the Pirate ports, with a handful of attacks and raids, most notably the one immortalized in the Marine Hymn's 'to the shores of Tripoli.' But NONE of those attacks had any real effect because they were never followed up - or if they were, they were followed up by desperate offers of negotiation.
In short, negotiation and military action only put the Pirates off long enough for them to replace their losses and try again. It wasn't until after the War of 1812 that a USN task force went in and sank on sight any Barbary corsair, guilty or not, that the Pirates finally quit. Readers should draw their own conclusions.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
01/30/2006 7:41 Comments ||
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Who wrote this? Neville Chamberlan? This guy hopes for 'Peace in our Time!'. Does he really think that Bin Laden would honor any agreement once he is able to regroup and re-arm?
And I wouldn't cal Murtha a 'respected congressman'.
Correct me if I'm wrong (and I was only about 14 at the time) but Nixons 'Overture to China' during the Vietnam war didn't help the victims of the re-education camps very much did it? Or those who chose to risk the open-sea in a open-boat over living in the workers paradise?
CARACAS US anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan yesterday called President George W. Bush a terrorist during a live broadcast in Caracas of a weekly programme hosted by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. By his own definition, he (Bush) is a terrorist, said Sheehan.
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/30/2006 0:25 Comments ||
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Lord Haw Haw was hanged.
Posted by: ed ||
01/30/2006 1:10 Comments ||
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Still playing with Google, to find Bush's definition of terrorist that dear Mother Cindy is voicing that Bush's definition of a terrorist is the terrorist the Bush is... but not sharing the Bush definition of terrorist that she thinks Bush is exhibiting to be a terrorist. Can't seem to find any referring statements, even from the media that wants Bush to be a terrorist.
Am I missing something here? Did I get this right? do I need to change some words in my Google search? But then, Google might think I'm Chinese and won't display Bush's difinition of terrorists, but then, the whole world knows Bush is a terrorist (blowing up his neighbors in Crawford... oh? Sorry, he didn't do that..... I'm kinda close enough to be called a neighbor, and I haven't been blown up)
Which only brings me back to going to Google to find Bush's definition of a terrorist, so the next time he comes to town, I can pull out that definition and be on alert for when he exhibits that definition so me and my neighbors won't be blown into all those little bitty bits of stuff, that won't even help our bluebonnets have a great season this year... cause this terrorist has stopped it from rainin' in Central Texas.. and.... Vince Young can't help..... cause Bush fell asleep during the football game...and Cindy says he is a terrorist....sooo
#5
The Dems are allegedly trying to save their Party by either "politics as usual" versus all but officially publicly demanding that the Spetzies nuke America. Truth be told, even iff the Spetzlamies did nuke America, the old-style Dem Party will still end up being gulagged by the Clintons and Radical/Ultra-Left. Remember, its NOT Socialism or Communism or even Universal Governmentism, but feel-good Safety, Security, Protection, and Responsibility, where the Fed must, Must, MUST, D *** YOU ALL, M-U-S-T EXPAND AND TAKE OVER EVERYTHING AND EVERYONE, AND LEST WE FIRGIT NO ONE.
#6
That's the great thing about moonbat leftists, they're not afraid to take a word and give it a new meaning that flatly contradicts its dictionary definition. Call it creativity, if you will.
#7
US anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan yesterday called President George W. Bush a terrorist during a live broadcast in Caracas of a weekly programme hosted by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
4 generations of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) activists are working to link the local chapters that have sprung up independently since the Iraq War began into a national organization.
"Independently" my arse. Somebody must be pouring lots of dough into reviving the SDS® brand. Let's follow the money, shall we?
yes - it should prove particularly interesting in this election year and the runup to 2008
Start with Medea Benjamin and peek into the Tides Foundation ...
SDS founder Alan Haber likes to say he is "waiting for the next meeting of SDS". He won't have to wait long...the next SDS national conference, the first since 1969, is planned for this summer.
Guest starring the Cindy Sheehan Revue, no doubt.
Several chapters of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) announced today, Monday, January 16, 2006, their intent to form a national organization and hold the first SDS national convention since 1969. "It seemed appropriate to make this announcement today, on the observed Martin Luther King day", said SDS regional organizer Thomas Good. "We have an anti-war movement that is addressing the issue of stopping the bloodletting in Iraq but the civil rights issue remains unaddressed", he added. The national convention is scheduled for Summer 2006 and will be preceeded by a series of regional conferences occurring on the Memorial Day weekend...
#1
OMFG, do these people have no new ideas whatsoever?
Ya know, in some ways the antiwar left reminds of those japaneese soldiers left in isolated outposts after WW II. They are so defined by what they were, that to give up would leave them with no point or purpose whatsoever.
I wonder who's paying for this, now that the Soviet Union is history.
Posted by: N guard ||
01/30/2006 0:28 Comments ||
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#2
Well, the origin of the SDS was at a conference financed by the United Auto Workers. This incarnation probably has some DNC money behind it.
Posted by: Formerly Dan ||
01/30/2006 0:53 Comments ||
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#3
Names of the older ones please.
BTW... in the Viet period the ruskies gave them 13 billion. They gave 1/2 bill to the Weather Underground to get lost. The rest was supposed to be spent buying land for the PC-Correct Peasants in the Rocky Mountains so they could have land owning peasant supporters and be of the people at a later date. This didn't happen so somebody(ies) got the money.. accountant time...
#4
The Soviet Union went bankrupt & out of business a while ago, but the KGB didn't, i.e. look who's in charge of Russia now. After 1989 the USA had a large group of unemployed radicals whose god had died, and Russia, its unemployed spies and subsersives. Combine that with Wahhabi money, and you have many of the key ingredients to today's world.
#11
I wonder if zombie hippies smell any different from the living kind...
/cue Romerero soundtrack
"Bonnngs...bonnngs..."
Posted by: N guard ||
01/30/2006 10:07 Comments ||
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#12
The best and only hope is for nature to take its course: DEATH by natural (or in the case of many of these hippies, massive narcotics use that results in death by unnatural) causes.
Problem: I'm only about 12 years younger than these asshats, so as they die off ... guess who's next in line.
CARACAS, Venezuela Jan 29, 2006 Cindy Sheehan, the peace activist who set up camp near President Bush's Texas ranch last summer, said Saturday she is considering running against Sen. Dianne Feinstein to protest what she called the California lawmaker's support for the war in Iraq.
"She voted for the war. She continues to vote for the funding. She won't call for an immediate withdrawal of the troops," Sheehan told The Associated Press in an interview while attending the World Social Forum in Venezuela along with thousands of other anti-war and anti-globalization activists. "I think our senator needs to be held accountable for her support of George Bush and his war policies," said Sheehan, whose 24-year-old soldier son Casey was killed in Iraq in 2004.
God, is Karl Rove a genius, or what?
Feinstein's campaign manager, Kam Kuwata, said the senator "doesn't support George Bush and his war policies." "She has stated publicly on numerous occasions that she felt she was misled by the administration at the time of the vote," Kuwata said by phone from California. But with troops committed, Feinstein believes immediate withdrawal is not a responsible option, Kuwata said. "Senator Feinstein's position is, let's work toward quickly turning over the defense of Iraq to Iraqis so that we can bring the troops home as soon as possible," he said.
Sheehan accused Feinstein of being out of touch with Californians on the issue.
She said she would decide whether to run after talking with her three other adult children. The Democratic primary will be held in June, and candidates must submit their statements for the voter guide by Feb. 14.
Kuwata said Feinstein and Sheehan appear to have a fundamental disagreement over whether troops should be pulled out right now. "That's why they have elections, and if she decides to file (paperwork to run), so be it," he said.
Sheehan said running in the Democratic primary would help make a broader point.
"If I decided to run, I would have no illusions of winning, but it would bring attention to all the peace candidates in the country," she said.
Yes, and boost popcorn sales beyond all expectation
Sheehan, 48, who lives in Berkeley, Calif., said she would head to Washington on Sunday for protests against Bush's State of the Union address on Tuesday, and then return to California to discuss her idea of running against Feinstein with her son and two daughters. "I can't see if they think it's going to help peace that they would be opposed to me doing it," she said.
#2
This will be a moonbat's paradise! Just imagine the primary with hollywierd picking sides on which moonbat to follow. Those with foil lined hats, for protection of course, will be with Feinstein and all those way over the edge will be lined up to follow the 21st century Jane Fonda.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
01/30/2006 9:38 Comments ||
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#6
IF DiFi can win without veering too far left, she can use this to reestablish her moderate credentials. And I think DiFi can demolish Sheehan. Politics, even in Calif, is about more than Iraq. WTF does Sheehan know about highways, air quality, prescription drugs, the semiconductor industry, movie piracy, agriculture, etc. Nah, Id place all my bets on DiFi on this one. All Sheehan does is show herself to be a pol, rather than a saint. Sure she'll win berzerkley, and SF (a big embarrasment to DiFi) and Marin, but Southern Calif Dems, Silicon Valley Dems, etc will I suspect vote DiFi.
#8
For the good of the country, I hope 'Hawk is right, but I suspect that the moonbats have more power over a Dem primary than anyone gives them credit for.
Here's a possible scenario: A bunch of far-left money and manpower goes to Mother Sheehan in the primary, so she can run a campaign all out of proportion to her actual support. If Di-Fi squeezes out a win in the primary, she finds to her dismay that none of the usual sources are willing to pony up for the general election.
Posted by: Mike ||
01/30/2006 11:48 Comments ||
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#9
Popcorn, anyone? :-D
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
01/30/2006 12:33 Comments ||
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#10
Go DiFi!!!
LH, that "woman" made people like my wife and I (gun owners) all but illegal in California. If there is a difference between her and a 1930's fascist I have no idea what it might be. The only place that old bitch should go is into a grave.
#11
In the 1970 primaries the doves took on prowar Dem congressmen, and won a bunch. The primary winners generally didnt do as well in the general elections as the incumbents had, but still won a bunch of seats.
But this isnt 1970. No draft. A very different situation on the ground in Iraq. I just dont see the political situation as being as favorable to the dovish left. OTOH Im not in California.
#12
"A bunch of far-left money and manpower goes to Mother Sheehan in the primary, so she can run a campaign all out of proportion to her actual support. If Di-Fi squeezes out a win in the primary, she finds to her dismay that none of the usual sources are willing to pony up for the general election."
I wonder how much DiFi is dependent on Hollywood $ as opposed to Silicon Valley $. And is Hollywood a monolith? Who carries more wait, a Streisand, or the studio biz types, who are more worried about issues like IP law than about Iraq? And even the Streisands, are they gonna spend big bucks on Sheehan?
#19
..discuss her idea of running against Feinstein with her son and two daughters. "I can't see if they think it's going to help peace that they would be opposed to me doing it" She couldn't see why Casey would volunteer for a 2nd tour to Iraq either....the woman is blind/dumb/blond, and a perfect replacement for DiFi against the winning Repub nominee.
#20
But this isnt 1970. No draft. A very different situation on the ground in Iraq. I just dont see the political situation as being as favorable to the dovish left.
More favorable than one would think. Sheehan might not win the primary, but she would certainly damage both Feinstein and the CA Democrat Party.
#21
All you need to win in Cal is get the Bay Area and "Southern California." If you don't Live in Texas or Alaska you can't understand how little of the land mass of the state that represents. The rest of the State disagrees wiht Babs and DiFi but their is not a damn thing we can do but try and out breed them.
#22
SPOD - the Roe effect will help. Go vote for Cindy to run....we need the laffs and Di-Fi will just sh*t at having to deal with her
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/30/2006 20:50 Comments ||
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#23
I voted yea. I think it's important that the Democratic Party be forced to deal with its crazies, rather than just milking them for money and votes.
Mexican officials say they've arrested four illegal-alien Iraqis trying to sneak across the border into the United States. Acting on an anonymous tip, police found the four aliens on a bus in Navajoa, about 375 miles south of the Arizona border, Mexico's attorney general's office said. Mexican immigration officials are investigating to try to determine how the Iraqis got into the country. This is kind of far-out, but maybe bribery?
The Associated Press reports though many illegal-alien Iraqis have been captured in Mexican territory en route to the U.S. border, none has been found to have had any links to terrorism. Meanwhile, recent developments indicate Mexican government officials are sometimes working on behalf of illegal aliens and drug smugglers, rather than against them.
The Mexican government over the weekend stated the U.S. Border Patrol had arrested a Mexican immigration official who was allegedly trying to help a group of illegals sneak into the United States. Francisco Javier Gutierrez was arrested at a checkpoint near Alamogordo, N.M., about 100 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border, the Mexican Interior Department said in a news release.
As Worldnetdaily reported, last week Texas law enforcement officers and Border Patrol agents engaged in an armed standoff with Mexican military personnel just inside the United States along the Rio Grande. The Mexican soldiers were sporting mounted machine guns on their Humvees and apparently were assisting drug smugglers who were trying to bring marijuana across the border.
Mexican officials say they've arrested four illegal-alien Iraqis trying to sneak across the border into the United States. Acting on an anonymous tip, police found the four aliens on a bus in Navajoa, about 375 miles south of the Arizona border, Mexico's attorney general's office said. Mexican immigration officials are investigating to try to determine how the Iraqis got into the country. This is kind of far-out, but maybe bribery?
The Associated Press reports though many illegal-alien Iraqis have been captured in Mexican territory en route to the U.S. border, none has been found to have had any links to terrorism. Meanwhile, recent developments indicate Mexican government officials are sometimes working on behalf of illegal aliens and drug smugglers, rather than against them.
The Mexican government over the weekend stated the U.S. Border Patrol had arrested a Mexican immigration official who was allegedly trying to help a group of illegals sneak into the United States. Francisco Javier Gutierrez was arrested at a checkpoint near Alamogordo, N.M., about 100 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border, the Mexican Interior Department said in a news release.
As Worldnetdaily reported, last week Texas law enforcement officers and Border Patrol agents engaged in an armed standoff with Mexican military personnel just inside the United States along the Rio Grande. The Mexican soldiers were sporting mounted machine guns on their Humvees and apparently were assisting drug smugglers who were trying to bring marijuana across the border.
#1
likely Chaldeans - Iraqi Christians. They've used this route to immigrate illegally (albeit for work/reunite families...usually). Same as Mexicans or any other illegals - send em back. Especially now that they can't claim political refuge
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/30/2006 20:19 Comments ||
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#2
Remember also that because of Saddam, ol' boy, there is a de facto diaspora of Iraqis throughout the Middle East and Europe. Many have given up on Iraq alltogether, and want to start over outside of the ME--a lot kissing off Islam at the same time.
Former US president Bill Clinton warned of rising anti-Islamic prejudice, comparing it to historic anti-Semitism as he condemned the publishing of cartoons depicting Prophet Mohammed in a Danish newspaper.
"So now what are we going to do? ... Replace the anti-Semitic prejudice with anti-Islamic prejudice?" he said at an economic conference in the Qatari capital of Doha.
"In Europe, most of the struggles we've had in the past 50 years have been to fight prejudices against Jews, to fight against anti-Semitism," he said.
Clinton described as "appalling" the 12 cartoons published in a Danish newspaper in September depicting Prophet Mohammed and causing uproar in the Muslim world.
"None of us are totally free of stereotypes about people of different races, different ethnic groups, and different religions ... there was this appalling example in northern Europe, in Denmark ... these totally outrageous cartoons against Islam," he said.
The cartoons, including a portrayal of the prophet wearing a time-bomb-shaped turban, were reprinted in a Norwegian magazine in January, sparking uproar in the Muslim world where images of the prophet are considered blasphemous.
Clinton criticised the tendency to generalise negative news of Islamic militancy.
"Because people see headlines that they don't like (they will) apply that to a whole religion, a whole faith, a whole region and a whole people?" he asked.
A wide campaign to boycott Danish products has swept through Muslim countries as many governments and organisations have demanded an apology from the Danish government.
Clinton said the United States should continue to push for a Middle East settlement, in light of the stunning win by the radical Islamist movement Hamas in last week's Palestinian elections.
"It is important that ... we continue to be heavily involved in the resolution of the issues in the Middle East. (But) it depends in part on what Hamas says and does," he said.
"When we (US) are involved, fewer people (have) died," he said
#1
Free speech be damned! A "libel against Islam" would you say Mr. President, something akin to the Satanic Verses, eh? For phouechs sake Clinton using the word "appalling" is in itself "appalling."
#2
This tool's seriously competing with Carter for the Worst Ex-president Ever award. Of course, as long as Jummy's still kicking, he's got a lock on it. Bill must be pre-positioning himself for when Jimmy kicks the bucket.
#3
He hasn't seen the cartoons they are tame compared ones of him on any given day. Clinton is such a TRANZI wanker. It's free speech you freeking Dhimmi tool!
#6
"So now what are we going to do? ... Replace the anti-Semitic prejudice with anti-Islamic prejudice?"
Where the Hell do these damn liberals learn to THINK, anyway???? Or is it that they simply don't bother?
"Prejudice" doesn't have a damn thing to do with it. "Prejudice" is what's at play when we PRE-judge people-- literally, making judgements about them without the benefit of knowledge.
We don't have to "pre"-judge Muslims or Islam; because anyone who's not had his head stuck firmly up his ass for the last 40 years can form conclusions-- damning conclusions-- on the basis of abundant evidence.
Fuck Bill Clinton, his cigar, and the horse they rode in on.
Feh.
Posted by: Dave D. ||
01/30/2006 17:17 Comments ||
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LOS ANGELES RADIO STATION SQUARES-OFF WITH MUSLIM GROUP
Mon Jan 30 2006 10:10:49 ET
Los Angeles's top talkradio station is under fire from a Muslim group because of comments made earlier this month by morning man Bill Handel. The Council on American-Islamic Relations has demanded an apology from Handel for making fun of a stampede that killed hundreds of Muslims during an annual pilgrimage.
But Handel is set to fire back, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.
Handel will apologize IF the Council on American-Islamic Relations:
1) Decries all acts of terror (described specifically, not generally)
2) Agrees that Israel is a sovereign nation with the right to defensible borders
3) CAIR has no ties of any sort, financially or otherwise, to any terror orgs or individiuals.
MANAGEMENT STATEMENT
KFI-AM does not condone making light of the deaths of people engaged in religious observances. We regret that listeners found the comments of one of our on-air hosts to be insensitive. KFI does not censor its hosts, nor does it tell them what to say or not to say. KFI is a strong and passionate believer in 1st amendment rights and that is at the very core of this radio station.
Developing... Handel was on fire this AM - if they want an apology they'll be changing themselves...not likely
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/30/2006 11:04 ||
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#4
I am a little fuzzy on the number of stampedes that have occurred at Christian functions. I did a google search and there are no references. I am not sure what they are eating, drinking, or smoking in Mecca, but maybe they need to curtail it? Oh and CAIR can kiss my ass!
#5
I am a little fuzzy on the number of stampedes that have occurred at Christian functions.
I seem to recall some new footage of kids running across the White House lawn during the annual Easter egg hunt. Don't remember anyone dying, though. Seems to me, to qualify as a legit stampede, you need either death or drunkeness or both in some combination.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice leaves on Sunday for a 36-hour trip to London where she will attend a series of meetings on Afghanistan, Hamas and Iran. The top US diplomat is due to arrive in the British capital late Sunday and has a meeting scheduled mid-Monday with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, in town for a conference of donors to Afghanistan on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/30/2006 00:00 ||
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The Bush administration is unlikely to shy away from using Predator missile attacks on al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan, despite the risk of political backlash for U.S. ally, President Pervez Musharraf, officials and intelligence experts say.
The CIA has used pilotless Predator drones to carry out at least three attacks against al Qaeda targets in Pakistan over the past eight months, including a Jan. 13 airstrike targeted at al Qaeda No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahri, which killed 18 civilians including women and children.
"He (Musharraf) is walking a tightrope. He thinks that the United States' support is vital, both for Pakistan and himself. But he cannot allow an impression to form that ... the Americans can conduct such operations without consulting," said Talat Masood, a retired Pakistani military general turned political analyst.
The January strike on Damadola village failed to kill Zawahri, who was not there, according to Pakistani intelligence sources. It may have killed four other al Qaeda leaders, the sources said. But no bodies have been found and their deaths remain unconfirmed more than two weeks later.
U.S. sources say the prospect for civilian casualties and political fallout is part of a strategic calculus that the CIA uses in deciding whether the targeted killing of a specific al Qaeda member is worthwhile.
"It's all a question of who the target is. And if the target is right, they'll attack again with the Predator," said Ruel Marc Gerecht, a former CIA Middle Eastern specialist.
Retired generals in Pakistan think the same. A former head of the ISI said that ruthlessly destroying potential threats is part of U.S. military culture. "If they suspect the enemy is there, then they go for it," said the former Pakistani spy chief, retired Lieutenant-General Asad Durrani.
Pakistan lodged a public protest a day after the Damadola airstrike, saying it would not allow such attacks to happen again, while demonstrations spread across the country and anti-American sentiment seethed in the Pashtun tribal belt on the border.
But there is a strong belief in U.S. and Pakistani intelligence circles that the Pakistani leadership knew of the attack ahead of time and that the military's Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI, shared information that prompted the CIA to seek clearance for the airstrike.
Musharraf himself did not condemn the U.S. action explicitly until last week, in media interviews during a visit to Europe.
U.S. President George W. Bush and other senior White House officials were apprised of the Damadola plan before the attack, according to intelligence sources who say the Americans considered the January missile strike to be especially sensitive because of the risk of civilian deaths.
"It was a White House decision. The CIA director generally has command and control. But this one was of such sensitivity that it needed a White House check-off," said a former U.S. intelligence officer with knowledge of the Damadola operation.
The White House, when contacted about the claim, had no comment.
Interrogations of Abu Faraj Farj al Liby, an al Qaeda operations chief captured in Pakistan last May, led the CIA and security forces to focus surveillance on Damadola.
"He's the one who told them Zawahri frequented it," said the former U.S. intelligence officer. "They got something from al Liby, and they've widened the search based on intelligence leads."
U.S. experts say Predator attacks give Washington leverage to pressure Pakistan into asserting greater control over the tribal badlands along the Afghan border, where al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and Zawahri are believed to be still roaming free.
Pakistani analysts say security forces have been successful in decimating the militant network's operational commanders there.
The Pakistani army has around 80,000 troops deployed on the border in addition to the tribal militias that form the Frontier Corps. But there are parts of the semi-autonomous regions where the army remains wary of going and where any troop movements would be quickly spotted and potential targets alerted.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/30/2006 03:25 ||
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#1
"you can't get away from the drones". Heh.
Can you imagine what it must be like for them? It's a wonder that they arent dead from parinoia induced stress, with the knowledge that somewhere up in the sky, tireless, remorseless, patient death is waiting...
Posted by: N guard ||
01/30/2006 13:49 Comments ||
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#2
..these aren't the drones you are looking for....
Pakistan's military spokesman said on Sunday he had no knowledge of a report that two years ago a delay by Pakistan in giving clearance for a U.S. airstrike gave time for Osama bin Laden to escape.
"No, no! Certainly not!"
The report on the Web site of Britain's Sunday Telegraph newspaper quoted an unnamed senior Western diplomat as saying that the CIA got a lead two years ago that the al Qaeda leader was hiding in Zhob, in the southwestern province of Baluchistan. It said that by the time U.S. officials got the go-ahead from Pakistan for an air strike, bin Laden had left the area.
That'd be Mahmoud the Weasel's work, of course...
Pakistan's military spokesman Major-General Shaukat Sultan said he had no knowledge of the specific incident, so could not say if it was right or wrong. "But from what I know of procedures, I assume this would be wrong," he told Reuters. "Intelligence is passed along and acted upon as fast as possible."
"It's just that sometimes our 'fast' is your 'slow.'"
Shaukat added that the appearance of such a report two years after a supposed event was "absolutely absurd."
Yasss... That was a long time ago, and we were all so much younger then..."
Posted by: Fred ||
01/30/2006 00:00 ||
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NEW DELHI India will not be pressured into voting against Iran over its suspect nuclear programme at this weeks meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh said yesterday. We will do what is right for the country. Indias national interest is the prime concern whether it is domestic or foreign policy, Singh told reporters in New Delhi, the Press Trust of India (PTI) news agency reported.
We will not come under pressure. We will do the right thing for the country. Our prime concern is to protect and safeguard Indias enlightened national interest, the premier said.
Even if that means arming the Mad Mullahs with nukes?
US ambassador David Mulford warned last week that a historic deal to provide India with American nuclear technology might fall through unless it votes against Iran at the February 2-3 meeting of the IAEA. Mulford said a prospective deal for the United States to transfer civilian nuclear technology to India would die in the US Congress if India voted against a resolution on Iran. If India decides not to back the resolution, the effect on members of the US Congress with regard to (India-US) civil nuclear initiative will be devastating, Mulford told PTI in an interview.
Indias communists, who lend crucial outside support to Singhs minority government, have asked the government to abstain from the vote if the IAEA meeting does not reach a consensus.
Which is won't of course, since the Chinese will vote 'no'.
During the IAEA meeting in Vienna in September, India voted with the United States, Britain, France and Germany to chide Iran for its nuclear programmes.
#2
The idea is that they think carefully about the situation, and decide to vote against Iran for their own self-protection. If they aren't willing to do even that much, why would we give them more advanced toys?
President Gen Pervez Musharraf has condemned the Bajaur air strike, calling it a violation of Pakistans sovereignty and stating that the attack was not coordinated with Islamabad.
"No, no! Certainly not! We have complete control of our borders!"
This was definitely not coordinated with us. We condemn it and have objected to it as an issue of sovereignty. (But) we do know there are foreigners and Al Qaeda in that (area). It is my regret that there are (such) people there, he said in an interview with the Washington Post published on Sunday.
I'm actually wondering what kind of "sovreignty" Pak claims over the FATA and NWFP. The primitives live by their own laws, making them up as they go along. Presumably they're not taxed, since we keep hearing about how inaccessible they are. If they live as a separate country, can Perv even claim a violation of sovreignty?
Asked if he meant Arabs or Al Qaeda members, he said, Yes, indeed. We are investigating who got killed there. Probably - and I use that word carefully - there were five or six Arabs or foreigners killed there. He added, While this (strike) is a violation of our sovereignty, I also consider the presence of Al Qaeda and foreigners a violation of our sovereignty. Lets not play into the hands of extremists (who say) that sovereignty is only violated when someone comes by air.
How about if we think of the area as an independent area under Pakland's protection but not under its control. Perv should be grateful to us for helping him maintain some sort of order.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/30/2006 00:00 ||
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#1
Actually, the locals in the FATA/NWFP are taxed, though it's closer to what we would understand as tribute than any kind of actual revenue system. They pay set amount to the local government in return for it leaving them alone in their primitive culture, which seems to be the way that things have been since at least the end of the Raj. I think that the closest thing we have to that in a Western conception would be something on the order of a suzerainty, but I'll defer to Paul or john on that score.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/30/2006 2:55 Comments ||
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#2
There is a big difference between the systems in place in the NWFP and FATA, despite having the same demography.
The NWFP is a province of the Pakistani nation, with a state parliament and representation on the federal level, just like Punjab and other provinces.
The FATA exists as an almost sovereign entity, with the current system completely unchanged since the days of the British Raj when there were constant low level wars to get the area under control, before the Brits gave up and simpy accepted nominal loyalty from the tribal leaders. In the FATA centrally appointed governors operatre like colonial administrators, able to punish a tribe for the crimes of some of it's members and so on.
Posted by: Paul Moloney ||
01/30/2006 4:41 Comments ||
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#3
So what's the cost of Perv if he allows us to have our way there?
Saddam Hussein's trial collapsed into chaos shortly after resuming Sunday, with one defendant dragged out of court and the defense team walking out in protest. The former Iraqi leader was then escorted out after he shouted "down with traitors" and refused his new court-appointed lawyers.
"I don't like them! They smell funny! Bring me someone fragrant!"
The new chief judge, Raouf Abdel-Rahman, pressed ahead with the proceedings even after the opening drama, hearing a prosecution witness, as he sought to assert tight control over the court.
Sammy's tactics involve making him more important than the witnesses...
Abdel-Rahman was installed as chief judge after his predecessor resigned amid complaints he was not doing enough to rein in Saddam's frequent courtroom outbursts. The stormy session was sure to increase doubts over the trial's fairness a vital concern in a nation that is trying to reconcile its Sunni Arab minority, which dominated Iraq under Saddam, and the Shiite Muslim majority that now controls the government.
I still, after all these years, find it surprising that "fairness" and "justice" manage to diverge so widely in courtrooms. That's probably a result of my substandard education.
Sunday's proceedings, the first in over a month, disintegrated almost immediately into shouting and insults. First, co-defendant Barzan Ibrahim was pulled out by guards after he stood and called the court "the daughter of a whore," while Saddam shouted "down with traitors" and "down with the Americans." Then Abdel-Rahman, a Kurd, threw out a defense attorneys for arguing with him. The rest of the defense team stormed out in protest as the judge shouted after after them, "Any lawyer who walks out will not be allowed back into this courtroom."
Abdel-Rahman appointed four new defense lawyers. But Saddam stood and rejected them. Holding a copy of the Quran and other papers under his arm, he said he wanted to leave. After an argument with the judge during which guards pushed Saddam back into his chair guards escorted the former Iraqi leader out of the room. Two other defendants also rejected their new lawyers and were allowed to leave. The proceedings then resumed with only four of the eight defendants present, and none of their original lawyers.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/30/2006 00:00 ||
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#1
Leave Saddam and the rest of his cohort in their cells and let them attend the proceedings via videoconference.
#3
Is anyone else as sick as I am watching this butcher turn these court proceedings into his own private P.R. campaign? The judge has completely lost control over his courtroom and is letting Saddam turn it into a circus.
Whether Saddam watches this from his cell on closed-circuit or has to sit in the courtroom bound and gagged, one way or another they have to shut him up and restore some honor and dignity to these proceedings.
Posted by: Dar ||
01/30/2006 12:52 Comments ||
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#4
Geez, Don't they have contempt of court options to use against the defense team when they act up?
WTF?
Iraqs top Sunni Arab political leader on Sunday accused Shia-dominated security forces of pursuing a strategy of sectarian cleansing in Baghdad, saying the country will slip into turmoil if crackdowns dont end.
I thought that was what it was in now? And that the Sunnis were bumping off Shias left and right?
Adnan al-Dulaimi, leader of the Iraq Accordance Front, also indicated that he would oppose the vital interior and defence ministries being awarded to Shias. We believe that the posts of the interior and defence ministers should be kept away from any sectarian and political considerations, al-Dulaimi told reporters during a press conference in Baghdad.
"We should have them."
The Sunni stance sets the stage for a potentially fierce battle with predominant Shia figures over who will win the portfolios. On Saturday, the head of the Shia militia, the Badr Brigade, said Shia religious parties will never surrender those ministries. We are subjected to a daily slaughter. We will not relinquish security portfolios, said Hadi al-Amri, head of militia, which is the military arm of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Republic in Iraq, the countrys top Shia group and the dominant force in forming the next government.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/30/2006 00:00 ||
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Saudi Arabia could bail the Palestinian Authority out of an impending fiscal crisis following the landslide victory of Hamas if it transfers the $100 million to the Palestinian Authority that it pledged to PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas when he visited there in late December.
In addition to bailing out the PA, the money would also give Israel and the world more time to ponder how to deal with the PA following Wednesday's Hamas victory.
According to western diplomatic sources, Saudi Arabia pledged the money to Abbas because the European Union refused to transfer payment of some $60 million in November after the PA embarked on campaign economics: raising salaries and putting more people on its payroll. The Saudi money would be enough for the PA to pay January's salaries - about $60 million - and give it some additional breathing room.
Israel is scheduled to transfer to the PA some $60 million in taxes and customs revenues it collects for the PA on Friday. Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said at Sunday's cabinet meeting that Israel still had not decided whether - in light of the Hamas victory - it would indeed transfer the funds.
In the evening, at a press conference with visiting German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Olmert said that Israel "has no intention of transferring funds" that will aid terrorists. Underscoring that Israel was "very sensitive" to Abbas's position, he said Israel had to be very careful that money it transferred would not later be used against Israel.
Merkel said that Europe should not fund the PA as long as Hamas does not recognize Israel and disarm.
Government officials have said that Israel had the option of delaying the decision for a few days to see what developed in the PA, who would be a part of the new government, and whether international pressure would force Hamas to renounce terrorism and repeal its charter. One of Israel's concern is that if the international community cuts off all funds to the PA, Iran will step in, increasing its influence and sway over the PA.
If the Saudis make good on their $100 million pledge, the funds from Israel would be less critical for the PA, and Israel would buy some more time to watch the developments in the PA before deciding what to do with the funds. The money, government officials have pointed out, is not Israel's but rather tax and customs money it collects on behalf of the Palestinians. Israel held up the transfer of this money to the Palestinians in November 2000, soon after the outbreak of violence, for some 18 months, before restarting the transfers following intense international pressure.
Israel is not the only party interested in buying some time to see what develops in the PA, and whether Hamas forms or is part of the future PA government, before deciding their aid policy to the PA.
On the eve of two key international meetings Monday that will go a long way toward setting the tone as to how the world will now deal with the PA - a meeting of the Quartet in London and the EU foreign ministers in Brussels - Israeli diplomatic officials said the international community basically agreed with Israel about the need for Hamas to disarm and recognize it, but was also waiting to see what happens over the next few weeks before setting policy.
#1
Saudi Arabia could bail the Palestinian Authority out of an impending fiscal crisis following the landslide victory of Hamas if it transfers the $100 million to the Palestinian Authority that it pledged to PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas when he visited there in late December.
Sounds good to me. The Arabs helped create this situation, so at the very least, the Arabs should pay for it out of their own pockets.
Jewish settlers who took over a marketplace in this Palestinian city four years ago said Monday they would leave voluntarily, averting a potentially violent confrontation with thousands of troops preparing to remove them.
Israel had agreed to clear the marketplace and the separate community of Amona under a commitment to the United States to dismantle unauthorized settlement outposts in the West Bank. Palestinians and the international community view the outposts as seeds of future settlements.
The Israeli Supreme Court on Sunday rejected a last-ditch appeal from settlers to halt the Hebron evacuations, clearing the way for the removal operation to proceed. But the settlers agreed to leave after winning assurances they could return if a legal review determines the property is Jewish. Rest at link.
Posted by: ed ||
01/30/2006 08:58 ||
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Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz told the Israeli cabinet on Sunday that since the election Hamas was acting responsibly. Shortly afterwards, a senior Hamas official called on Israel to change its flag.
Attaboy, we knew you wouldn't let us down
Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz told the Israeli cabinet on Sunday that since Hamas won a sweeping victory in last Wednesdays PA parliamentary election, the extreme Islamic terror group was acting responsibly. Mofaz also said that in the short term, he thinks Hamas will refrain from terror attacks. He added that it was likely that the Hamas will also attempt to block the Islamic Jihad from carrying out terrorist attacks against Israel. Islamic Jihad, trying to portray itself as more radical than Hamas, boycotted last weeks election. They claimed that the elections were based on the Oslo accords and played into the hands of the United States.
Shortly after [Mofaz made] his comments about the Hamas, Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar said from Gaza that Israel must change its flag. "Israel must remove the two blue stripes from its national flag", said Zahar. The stripes on the flag are symbols of occupation. They signify Israel's borders stretching from the River Euphrates to the River Nile." Israels national flag, a blue Star of David set between two blue stripes, was designed to resemble a Jewish prayer shawl which traditionally has stripes.
"Yeah, and them stripes signify the rivers! They been plotting a long time!"
When asked whether the Hamas would renounce terrorism, Zahar said in a CNN interview, "What is the international definition of terrorism? When (Israeli planes) attack houses by F-16, just when they are using helicopters, when they are killing people and children and removing our agriculture system, this is terrorism." As for the future of ruling PA chief Mahmoud Abbas, Zahar said the Hamas planned to work with Abbas, also called Abu Mazen, the name he used as a PLO terrorist. Abbas, who heads the Fatah party, was elected head of the Palestinian Authority in a separate election. Legally, he can retain his post until finishing out a four-year term.
#1
When asked whether the Hamas would renounce terrorism, Zahar said in a CNN interview, "What is the international definition of terrorism? When (Israeli planes) attack houses by F-16, just when they are using helicopters, when they are killing people and children and removing our agriculture system, this is terrorism."
By the way Zahar, how ARE you coming with those former Jewish settler greenhouses? Farmin B. Hard eh?
#2
Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz told the Israeli cabinet on Sunday that since Hamas won a sweeping victory in last Wednesdays PA parliamentary election, the extreme Islamic terror group was acting responsibly. Mofaz also said that in the short term, he thinks Hamas will refrain from terror attacks.
Wherever the Paleos are concerned, NEVER engage in optimistic speculation of any sort, as one is likely to be let down with a thud.
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/30/2006 11:30 Comments ||
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What is it with their fixation on F-16s? So what are IAF F-15s - chopped liver?
F-16s are the ground attack platform of choice. The F-15 is mostly reserved for air defense. From a search : On January 27, 1994, the Israeli government announced that they intended to purchase the F-15I, which was a version of the F-15E Strike Eagle designed specifically for Israel. The F-15I is similar to the F-15E, but has some electronic components adjusted to meet Israeli requirements. Many of these components were to be built in Israel. A contract was signed on May 12, 1994 between the governments of the United States and Israel authorizing McDonnell Douglas to build 21 F-15Is for the IDFAF. The first examples were delivered in November of 1997. In order to ensure a night-fighting capability, the F-15Is will be fitted with some of the 30 Sharpshooter targeting pods intended for Israel's F-16 fleet. Israel will then buy new LANTIRN pods to complete the F-15I's night vision suite.
I'd wager when the Iranian strikes come up, the F-15I's will be used.
Posted by: Steve ||
01/30/2006 11:39 Comments ||
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#7
Obviously they want Israel to remove all the blue stuff from their flag.
#8
Legally, he can retain his post until finishing out a four-year term.
or until he's killed
I'll take "Dead" for $600, Alex.
If Hamas does not renounce their avowed intent to destroy Israel, then every single Palestinian government meeting is a terrorist conclave and subject to Hellfire HVAC.
As to changing the flag, all that's missing is the pony.
Hamas: Don't withhold aid, it won't go to terror
Hamas asked the international community on Monday not to cut aid to the Palestinian Authority, pledging that the funding would be used for social relief and not for violence blah blah and then this ....
"A Palestinian Authority [with Hamas in power] cannot be directly supported by money from the EU," German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Sunday during her visit to Israel..." it should be obvious what is being planned here.. the EUs provide funds to NGOs and then when the inevitable state sponsored terrorist attack happens they can pretend to be clean
#1
Maybe a couple of suicide bomings across Denmark and Norway - locals "revenging" caroons, will help Euros understand the complete insanity of these people.
The complete lunacy of the reaction to a cartoon has got to hit even this bunch as being just a little scary.
Remember the corruption in Paelstine - fund the NGO's and you fund terror.
From Martin Kramer's weblog, one of the best places to keep up-to-date about the idiocy that is the US Middle East studies program ...
Some people are up in arms over the fact that Palestinian analyst and pollster Khalil Shikaki has been made a senior research fellow at the new Crown Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Brandeis. Details of the controversy are here. The Zionist Organization of America is arrayed on one side, Americans for Peace Now on the other. I know Shikaki, he's no terrorist or terrorist sympathizer, and he's been a welcome speaker at The Washington Institute where I hang my hat. (He appeared there most recently on January 19.) I do think the new management of the Crown Center needn't have appointed him off the bat, since having him doesn't signal that the Crown Center intends to be different. I said my piece about the principles I hope will guide the Center when I spoke at its inauguration last spring. I invite my friends at Brandeis to reread my remarks carefully.
The problem with Shikaki lies in another realm altogether: his polls of Palestinian opinion. Shikaki runs something called the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, which gets money from foreign governments and foundations to conduct opinion surveys. They've earned Shikaki the moniker of "respected pollster," and he's always running off to Washington or a European capital to present his findings.
Shikaki conducted three crucial polls that affected perceptions in Washington, in the early parts of June, September and December 2005. They showed Fatah well ahead of Hamas, by a comfortable and growing margin:
June 2005: "Findings show that the level of participation in the next legislative elections will be 77% and the outcome of those elections will be as follows: 44% for Fateh, 33% for Hamas and Islamic Jihad, 3% for the left, and 8% for independent lists. 12% are undecided."
September 2005: "Findings show that 74% of the Palestinians will participate in the upcoming parliamentary elections in January 2006. Voting intentions among the likely participants indicate an increase of Fatehs support from 44% last June to 47% in this poll and a drop in Hamas support from 33% to 30% during the same period. 11% will vote for other factions and groups and 11% remain undecided."
December 2005: "If elections are held today, findings show that 78% of the Palestinians would participate (compared to 74% last September). Among those intending to participate in the upcoming parliamentary elections, 50% will vote for Fateh, 32% for Hamas, 9% for other factions and groups including independents, and 9% remain undecided."
With each new Shikaki poll, U.S. policymakers grew more lax when it came to setting conditions for Hamas participation. Robert Satloff and Dore Gold both sharply criticized the U.S. drift that allowed entry of a gun-toting, terrorist-talking Hamas into the electoral arena. They were disregarded because of certainty at the State Department and the White House that Fatah would win anyway, and that Abu Mazen would be in a stronger position to discipline Hamas after the victory. A lot of that certainty derived from Shikaki's polls.
Even in late December, a month before elections, Shikaki conducted a special poll that reported these results: "43% will vote for Fateh List while 25% will vote for the List of Change and Reform [Hamas], and 19% remain undecided." Only his last poll, in early January, showed Hamas closing the gap: "42% will vote for Fateh List while 35% will vote for the List of Change and Reform, and 7% remain undecided." Shikaki's exit poll on election day showed the gap had been closed, but was still wildly off the mark: "Results show Fateh winning the largest number of seats (58) followed by Hamas with 53 seats." In fact, Fatah took only 45 seats; Hamas collected 74.
Is it possible that the Shikaki polls were themselves part of Fatah election propaganda? This is the charge insinuated by a Jerusalem-based political analyst, Zakariya al-Qaq, without citing Shikaki by name: "The people who conducted these polls are inexperienced and unprofessional. They also made serious mistakes in the public opinion polls they conducted before the election. I believe they were then trying to affect the voters' decision by presenting a distorted picture." That's a serious charge, although it might refer to a pollster other than Shikaki. But even if this worst-case interpretation is improbable in Shikaki's case, the professionalism of his polls is very much in question.
That's significant, because Shikaki's polls have become a font of conventional wisdom. Whenever you hear someone say that a majority of Palestinians accept a two-state solution, or a majority of Palestinian refugees don't really want to return to Israel proper, or the Palestinians hate corruption more than Israel, it's a remote echo of one of Shikaki's polls. Complicating the picture is the fact that Shikaki isn't only a pollster. He's a political analyst, and even a political activist, which is why Americans for Peace Now have rallied to him in the Brandeis row. From Peace Now to the State Department, Shikaki is admired and feted because he tells peace processors what they want to hear--not just with emotion and analysis, but with numbers.
Unfortunately, we now have a concrete case in which his numbers just didn't add up. If Shikaki has an interesting explanation for what went wrong, and he posts it on his website, I'll be glad to link to it. At the moment, the last entry there is his exit poll, squatting like a grim epitaph. Hamas has never liked Shikaki or his polls: they've always claimed he underestimates them. Now it turns out that they've been right. If Hamas assumes real power, the future of Shikaki's polling gig is in doubt. It would be ironic and sad if he were forced into permanent Brandeis exile, by a famously vengeful movement he himself helped bring to power.
Update: According to this report, Israeli intelligence also relied on Shikaki's polls.
Addendum: Earlier this month, the United States Institute of Peace published a report by Shikaki, entitled Willingness to Compromise: Palestinian Public Opinion and the Peace Process. Finding: "Palestinian public opinion is not an impediment to progress in the peace process; to the contrary, over time the Palestinian public has become more moderate. Palestinian willingness to compromise is greater than it has been at any time since the start of the peace process.... Therefore, the time is ripe to deal with permanent-status issues." Ripe indeed.
Amusing: The New York Times throws in a quote from Shikaki in an article (Jan. 29) on the democracy dilemma in the Middle East. How is he identified? You guessed it: "respected Palestinian pollster."
Further update: Here it is: Shikaki spins (and sugarcoats) the election results in predictable ways, in a Newsweek column.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/30/2006 04:25 ||
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#1
My informal poll (I consult my own brain) tells me that if democratic elections were held in Eqypt, Saudia Arabia, Syria, Turkey, Pakistan, and maybe Iran, Osama bin Laden would be elected "Caliph" by a very wide margin. But then no one consults me...
#2
I've been saying as long as I've been hanging out here that polls in Muslim countries are all dirty. Even the ones taken by Western organizations like the Pew Foundation reek since they are subcontracted out to -- guess who? -- guys like Shikaki. (Did you think that Chad, Lars, and Pierre go into the slums of Islamabad, clip board in hand, to take these polls?) And guys like Shikaki don't want to wake up one morning to find that their oldest son is in mukhabarat custody, or that 'activists' burnt down their office last night. So they do whatever their government handler tells them to. Idiots in the MSM and policy elites believe them.
#3
Not to be too hard on Shikaki but we have some problems with polls here also (remember the Nov 2004 Kerry victory parties based on early exit polls).
Shikaki may well have done the best he could but one systemic problem is that polling is most accurate when the electorate is unemotional and the pollsters have a substantial history with that electorate so that they know how to create a representative sample and know how to ask follow up questions to validate the answers.
Of course another systemic problem is that the media are generally ignorant of the problems of polling (and yet another error is that the media view all facts through their ideological filter).
#6
Shikaki runs something called the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, which gets money from foreign governments and foundations to conduct opinion surveys.
Knowing who the funding sources are would be illuminating.
Hamas will use sharia as a guide for legislation after winning Palestinian elections, but has no plan to enforce strict Islamic law, close bars or stop men and women mixing in public, a senior leader said today.
Hamas's shock victory in last week's parliamentary election has stirred concerns among more liberal Palestinians that the Islamist group could enforce conservative views after defeating President Mahmoud Abbas's secular Fatah movement.
''We will not intervene in any aspect of Palestinian life...except to convince people in a polite way,'' said Mahmoud Ramahi, a member of the Hamas politburo who won a seat in the new parliament. "We are making efforts so that the sharia will be the source of legislation, but in order to implement Islamic rule, this needs a state. When we get a state, we will leave it to people to choose," he told Reuters in an interview. "We will let the people decide by holding a referendum, and we are sure the Palestinian people will choose Islam." Hamas softened some of its rhetoric ahead of the Palestinian election, emphasising its fight against corruption and its charity work rather than its formal aim of replacing Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip with an Islamic state.
Having won the election, Hamas now hopes to court other Palestinian parties to join a coalition and cannot afford to say anything that will drive them off. Fatah leaders have already said they do not want to join Hamas in government.
Hamas also hopes to try and win over Western donors that brand it a terrorist group for a suicide bombing campaign that killed hundreds of Israelis. The United States and European Union demand that Hamas disarm and change its position on Israel.
The 43-year-old anaesthetist said he wished that bars and restaurants did not serve alcohol, but Hamas would not close them if they did.
''We won't at any time introduce change by using force. We depend on cementing beliefs,'' Ramahi said. ''If people are convinced, then so be it. If not, it's up to them.'' Ramallah is one of the most liberal cities in the Middle East, but the Gaza Strip is far more conservative. The last bar openly serving alcohol in Gaza City -- a United Nations club -- was blown up by militants on New Year's Day.
Although Hamas is formally committed to destroying Israel, it has said it could accept a temporary state and a long term truce if Israel gave up all of the West Bank and East Jerusalem following last year's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.
Hamas has largely followed a truce for nearly a year.
Israel has said it will not talk to a Palestinian government that has Hamas members unless the group disarms and drops its vow to destroy the Jewish state.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/30/2006 04:11 ||
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#1
"We will not intervene in any aspect of Palestinian life ... except to convince people in a polite way," said Mahmoud Ramahi, a member of the Hamas politburo who won a seat in the new parliament.
I'd be ROTFLMAO, except that it's 4:20 AM and I'd wake the whole house up. 'Polite ways' no doubt include bombings, torture, stonings and amputations, floggings, and threatening letters. When those don't work, then they'll go medieval on you!
#3
B-A-R: Christian paleos? Now there's an oxymoron.
But I'll bow to your greater knowledge and assume there are some. They're infidels. What do you think? My suggestion: They apply yesterday to move to Israel.
As for Hamas and Sherry Shariah, this is a perfect example of "As ye sow, so shall ye reap."
I think the Paleos just got reaped. And they elected their own reapers. :-D
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
01/30/2006 12:39 Comments ||
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#4
But I'll bow to your greater knowledge and assume there are some
perhaps greater knowledge would be a good idea even before ranting so that you might at least sound like you know what your talking about
Posted by: bk ||
01/30/2006 12:53 Comments ||
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#5
theres a considerable number of Christian Pals, mainly Maronites and Greek Orthodox, including Hanan Ashrawi.
From what I understand some voted Hamas - probably cause A. Fatah wasnt that great for them and B. They though Hamas would lose, but this would shock Fatah into being less corrupt.
im not sure how this will play out for them - its quite possible Hamas will impose Sharia on Muslims only. OTOH the experience of Christians in Basra in Iraq has not been good, ditto for Copts in Egypt.
#6
As I recall, historically 20% of Palestinians are Christian. However, the number living in the Territories is now less than 8% (per CIA statistics) -- I believe significant numbers settled Stateside, where their children aren't taught to be dhimmis. The leadership of the Christian Palestinian community are as loudly anti-Israel and anti-Jew as their Muslim compatriots. I don't know as much about Israeli Palestinian Christians... perhaps one of our Israeli correspondants could inform us.
#7
The leadership of the Christian Palestinian community are as loudly anti-Israel and anti-Jew as their Muslim compatriots.
Right. Apart from their own LLL-induced anti-semitism, many American Protestant churches get their twisted view on the Pali situation from reports from Pali Christian groups.
I'm not excusing what these churches do - they're happily and willingly drinking the kool-aid without questioning it. As someone once said: "The truth is not in them."
JERUSALEM -- The incoming Hamas government will move quickly to make Islamic sharia "a source" of law in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and will overhaul the Palestinian education system to separate boys and girls and introduce a more Islamic curriculum, a senior official in the movement said yesterday.
Spelling out the domestic agenda of Hamas for the first time since the group's stunning victory in a legislative election this week, Sheik Mohammed Abu Teir also said Hamas would not go to foreign donors on bended knee if they withdrew aid to the Palestinian Authority.
That's okay, bended knee wouldn't work anyways.
Mr. Abu Teir, who was No. 2 on the Hamas list of candidates for Wednesday's election, said introducing sharia -- a controversial moral and legal code based on the Koran -- would be the first act of the new Hamas-controlled Palestinian Legislative Council. "The No. 1 thing we will do is take sharia as a source for legislation. Sharia has a soul in it and is good for all occasions," Mr. Abu Teir said in an interview with The Globe and Mail over a lunch of traditional Palestinian dishes supplemented with Coca-Cola. The table was set under photographs of Sheik Ahmed Yassin and Abdel Aziz Rantisi, past Hamas leaders who were assassinated in Israeli air strikes.
Which didn't seem to educate anyone present.
The current Palestinian legal system is based on Western-style jurisprudence and a hodgepodge of Jordanian, Egyptian and Ottoman laws. It's questionable whether Hamas could push through legislation introducing sharia as the basic law, since any such bill would have to be signed by Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, a social moderate.
Well, not as long as he's alive.
However, having won 76 of the 132 legislative seats in what observers billed the best-run election the Arab world has seen, Hamas -- which campaigned on the slogan "Islam is the solution" -- can argue that it has more popular support for its program than Mr. Abbas does for his.
Abu Teir was quick to clarify that the introduction of sharia didn't mean that alcohol would be banned, or that it would be made mandatory for women to cover their heads when outdoors, two fears raised by the group's liberal opponents.
Not this week, anyway.
Mr. Abu Teir's wording -- that sharia would be "a source" of law -- mirrors the language adopted in the new Iraqi constitution. Iran and Saudi Arabia use a strict interpretation of sharia as the only source of law and employ religious police to enforce it. That's not what Hamas has in mind, the sheik said. "We are centrists, we are against any kind of extremism. The motto that we operate on is that in religion, you cannot force people."
"Until we have total control and all the Jooos are dead. Then watch us."
Palestinian Christians, many of whom have expressed concerns about being ruled by Islamists, have nothing to fear, he added.
"As long as they behave themselves, pay their higher taxes and let us have our way with them, they will be fine," he noted.
The sheik, a resident of the Um Tuba neighbourhood of East Jerusalem, did say that he believes the consumption of alcohol is wrong, and that the Koran indicates women should dress modestly. He said Hamas hoped to lead by example and thus persuade people to change their ways and follow the teachings of Islam more closely. "We will not force a woman to wear the hijab [Islamic head scarf]; we hope that decision will come from inside her. I don't care to have women put on the hijab and then take it off when no one is looking," he said.
He made it clear that one way Hamas planned to encourage the next generation to follow sharia was to revamp the Palestinian education system, separating girls' and boys' classes and introducing a more Islamic curriculum. "We will take such measures because we look at examples in the West, like Sweden. They have the highest level of co-education and the highest level of suicides," he said. "We would like our children to have a protected environment. We don't want any distractions for our boys or our girls."
"And that way we can make the girls wear the hajib."
On external affairs, Mr. Abu Teir gave no hint that Hamas would adjust its hard-line stand of refusing to recognize, or negotiate with, Israel. He said that instead of pressuring Hamas to disarm, the West should be demanding that Israel leave the West Bank, release all Palestinian prisoners and allow the return of the 4.1 million Palestinian refugees.
If they all want to live in Gaza, no problem. It can look like the south Bronx used to look.
Mr. Abu Teir expressed dismay at how news of Hamas's victory was received in the West, saying he didn't understand why the West, after years of giving money to a Palestinian Authority run by the corrupt Fatah movement, was now considering withholding aid. "Why is the West worried? We're not thieves. Had that money been given to us, it would have found many good uses."
"I mean, we're careful stewards with money, look at all the guns and ammo we've bought. We're shrewd bargainers when it comes to rockets, not like those Fatah guys who can't even get a rocket to land in Israel."
However, he said Hamas would not go begging if aid were slashed. "Our people would rather live in poverty than live in humiliation with Israeli and Western aid."
Right now you have both poverty and humiliation.
Palestinian political analysts said Mr. Abu Teir's remarks reveal the political immaturity of Hamas. The responsibilities and realities of being in power, several have predicted, would require them to abandon much of their ideological rhetoric. "When Hamas starts doing these things, they will get into all kinds of trouble. Politically, socially, economically, they will not be able to do the kinds of things they are talking about," said Basem Ezbidi, a political scientist at Birzeit University in Ramallah. "Many people are truly worried right now."
Especially the ones standing next to Teir.
He said it is "insanity" for Hamas to say that it would not talk to Israel or that it does not need foreign aid. Palestinians regularly use Israeli hospitals, roads and the Israeli electricity grid, and the Palestinian Authority relies on Israel to collect sales taxes on its behalf.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/30/2006 00:00 ||
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#1
We will not force a woman to wear the hijab [Islamic head scarf]; we hope that decision will come from inside her.
Or Ham-ass thugs will gang rape her - after all she's only property - no legal rights. Under Sharia she cannot even bring charges of rape without (what is it? 4?) male witnesses. And even then she can be stoned to death for 'adultery' while her rapists would only have to pay her [male] master damages.
#2
He made it clear that one way Hamas planned to encourage the next generation to follow sharia was to revamp the Palestinian education system, separating girls' and boys' classes and introducing a more Islamic curriculum.
Guaranteeing that Palestine becomes the economic dynamo that Iran has become.
Posted by: Formerly Dan ||
01/30/2006 1:02 Comments ||
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#3
He knows Iran is going to pick up the slack on any lost western funding. That is the plan anyhow.
Shria law thing will be instated and the usual thugs will enforce it.
Things are going to get difficult for the Paloes just when they thought is couldn't get worse. Oh yes it can and it will.
#7
No need to study fossils or dig up archaeological sites to study the Stone Age. Go to the ME and see it live!
Posted by: Dar ||
01/30/2006 12:55 Comments ||
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#8
"We will take such measures because we look at examples in the West, like Sweden. They have the highest level of co-education and the highest level of suicides," he said.
Ahhh yes, what passes for logic in the Arab world. Simply amazing.
All they have to do is look the other way when thugs enforce Sharia on the street.
So what else is new? Hasn't the intifada been one long continuous episode of plausible deniability with Hamas, Hizbullah, Fatah and al Aqsa all pointing at one another as they plot each new attack? Outsourcing the mutawwa would be just another button on the coat for these weasles.
Send Lorena Bobbit over for a lecture tour on establishing mutual respect in marital relationships. Oh yeah, and a boatload of dull, rusty pinking shears.
Israeli security bodies started an internal investigation for its failure to predict the the sweeping victory of Hamas in the Palestinian legislative elections. According to the Israeli media, Israeli government sources criticized the Israeli security bodies for their failure to analyze the possibility of a Hamas victory and its vital impacts. The Israeli Haaretz daily reported that most of the intelligence analyses which were submitted to the Israeli cabinet indicated the possibility of a Hamas victory in the elections. It added that the military intelligence and internal security bodies predicted the slight victory of Fatah. The Israeli security bodies affirmed that their dependency on the Palestinian opinion polls before the elections was a major mistake especially that the polls failed to predict the victory of Hamas in the elections.
I dunno the finer points of Paleo politix, but does this mean the Martyrs' Brigades rats are deserting the sinking Mahmoud Abbas ship of state? Have they officially switched sides in hopes of joining the Hamas gravy train?
Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, Fatah's military wing, said Sunday it respected outcome of recent Palestinian elections which brought Islamic resistant movement, Hamas, victorious. A statement by the brigades called on Hamas to implement its program and protect the resistance. It called on all those in Fatah, which gained 43 seats in the parliament, to reunite and assess the reasons behind their defeat. The Brigades underlined they would be committed to resistance and keen on bringing about the release of the Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. The military wing called on members of Fatah's central committee to resign immediately and form an emergency committee to run the movement. Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades reiterated rejection to join any government formed by Hamas, which won 78 seats.
The Palestinian National Liberation Movement (Fatah) Central Committee decided on Sunday to dismiss 76 of its members after running as independent candidates in the latest Palestinian Legislative Council's (PLC) elections. The dismissed persons included six members of Fatah's Revolutionary Council -- Burhan Jarrar, Ahmad Al-Deek, Fayez Zaidan, Nahedh Al-Raees, Fakhri Shaqourah and Saleem Al-Zaree'e. As it is the mediator between Fatah's Central Committee and General-Assembly, the Revolutionary Council is a key body in the movement.
Before the elections, the movement said any member who runs independently in the elections will be dismissed. Many of Fatah members said the independence of some its members in the elections led to losing the election to the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas). Also:
In another development, Fatah's command in Rafah issued collective resignation to establish a preparatory committee for the movement's in-house elections. In a press release, the command requested the resignation of the Central Committee and Revolutionary Council before establishing the committee in preparation for the movement's sixth General-Assembly. The command urged Fatah's PLC members not to participate in the upcoming cabinet that will be lead by Hamas.
In Rafah, as it was the only city where Fatah held internal preparatory elections, Fatah's candidates won the city's three PLC posts. For past three days, Fatah's allies held protests over the movement's electoral defeat, requesting the Central Committee's resignation. Protestors raided the PLC's headquarters in Gaza and caused some material damage. Out of the PLC's 132 chairs, the elections final results gave Fatah 45 spots and awarded Hamas the right to form the upcoming cabinet with 78 MPs.
Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Sunday ruled out contacts with a Hamas-led Palestinian government until the Islamic group renounces violence, and Israel's defence minister threatened to "liquidate" Hamas militants involved in attacks. With the latest comments, Israel showed no signs of backing down from the tough line it has taken since Hamas won a landslide victory in Palestinian legislative elections last week.
Olmert, addressing the weekly meeting of his Cabinet, said he has received widespread international support for the Israeli position towards Hamas. Officials said Olmert has been in touch with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, as well as leaders from France, Egypt and Jordan. We clarified that without a clear abandonment of the path of terror, a recognition of Israels right to exist in security and peace ... Israel wont have any contact with the Palestinians, Olmert said. These principles are accepted by the international community. On this issue, I dont intend to make any compromises. Later Sunday, Olmert consulted with his top security advisers.
Ahead of the meeting, Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said Israel is prepared to resume its deadly airstrikes on Hamas targets. Those who head terror organisations and continue to engage in terror against the state of Israel will be liquidated, told Channel 2 TV on Saturday night. Hamas knows better ... what Israels powers and capabilities are in fighting terror.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/30/2006 00:00 ||
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Deputies from Fatah confirmed on Sunday that the beleaguered faction would not join Hamas in a coalition government after the radical Islamists' sensational election victory. We have a decision from all the Fatah leadership not to enter the new government, said deputy Abdullah Abdullah after holding talks with Abbas at his West Bank headquarters. By giving Hamas a majority, the Palestinian people gave them a mandate to form the new government and we will be a positive opposition, he told AFP.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/30/2006 00:00 ||
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A prolonged and bloody civil war between these peace loving factions appears to unfortunately be the only answer.
The militant Islamic movement Hamas has rejected demands for it to disarm, saying it will not bow to threats from foreign governments to cut aid to the Palestinian Authority.
Comes as a surprise, doesn't it? And I was sure sure they would...
Posted by: Fred ||
01/30/2006 00:00 ||
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..saying it will not bow to threats from foreign governments to cut aid to the Palestinian Authority.
And there's the challenge.
Are we going to be the first to take them up on it? I sure hope so.
The Palestinian Central Elections Commission has made a slight revision to the result of last week's general election, reducing by two the number of seats won by Hamas.
Why, that's un-Islamic! They must be killed!
A senior official at the Central Elections Commission says that the final official result now shows Hamas has won 74 rather than 76 seats in the election. The former ruling Fatah faction's tally has been revised upwards from 43 to 45. The landslide victory for Hamas marked an end to Fatah's decade-long dominance of the Parliament.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/30/2006 00:00 ||
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Another week, it'll be fifty-nine apiece. They'll give the odd seat to some guy named Murray.
The Thai insurgency has formally entered its third straight year. Between January 2004 and January 2006, more than 1,200 people were killed. In January 2004, violent incidents averaged 30 per month; by December 2004, violent incidents averaged 120 per month. By June 2005, bombings averaged more than one per day. More than 300 were killed and more than 300 wounded in the six months following the introduction of the Emergency Decree in July 2005 (The Bangkok Post, October 24, 2005). In 2006 alone, 19 people have been killed, seven in one dayfive of whom were policemen. The presence of over 40,000 security forces has done little to stop the insurgency.
While the majority of victims are killed in drive by shootings and assassinations, the technical capacity of the bombs has increased dramatically. Thai Muslim bomb-makers now assemble 10kg bombs composed of a variety of components, including powergel, TNT, potassium chlorate, and ammonium nitrate. The detonators have become sophisticated to the point that the government had to block all un-registered pre-paid cell phones in the three southernmost provinces. Authorities also have evidence that the militants are now experimenting with infrared devices as detonators, although they have not consistently deployed these bombs (The Nation, November 29, 2005). The Thai militants are also learning techniques from abroad. According to a senior intelligence official, "They have stolen cement kilometer road markers to make bombs, for which we have seen instructions posted on some web sites in the Middle East" (Reuters, October 6, 2005).
The insurgents have become more sophisticated in a number of other ways. Not only are attacks becoming more clinically precise, but there was an increase in coordinated attacks in 2005. For example, October 26, 2005 saw 34 coordinated night-time attacks that left six people dead in raids (Associated Press, October 27, 2005). In another incident, 18 locations in six different districts were hit in one night. In another, militants hit two dozen outposts in one night, killing five and seizing 42 firearms (The Nation, October 27, 2005). More than 100 government weapons were stolen by militants between November and December 2005. On January 18, militants launched 101 coordinated arson attacks across three provinces.
What was also notable about attacks in 2005 was that they became more shocking and more brutal with the purpose of inciting revulsion and fear. There have now been 24 beheadings, one of which was done before a crowded tea house. In October 2005, 15 militants stormed a Buddhist temple and hacked to death a monk, killed a novice monk, torched their bodies, and set the living quarters on fire. The incident gripped the country (The Nation, October 17, 2005).
While the government claims it has arrested 190 insurgents responsible for conducting or planning operations, there are still glaring shortages of information. Very few if any of the leaders of the insurgency have been arrested. There are still some 247 "red zones," villages controlled by insurgents. There is little reason to share the government's optimism. Indeed, on January 19, Deputy Prime Minister Chidchai Wannasathit, who claimed credit for the 190 arrests, recently lashed out at the state's intelligence services for their inability to stop the bloodletting.
The intelligence failure has been so great because Thai officials have rounded up the usual suspects: the old ethno-nationalist groups, such as the Pattani United Liberation Organization (PULO), that were active through the mid-1990s but are now defunct. The current insurgency is being led by two Islamist organizations that the Thai government has always considered peripheral: the Gerakan Mujiheddin Islami Pattan (GMIP) and the Barisan Revolusi Nasional-Coordinate (BRN-C). Their leaders are younger, Middle-Eastern-trained ustadz who have never appeared on the government's radar screen.
There is also a misunderstanding about the nature of the insurgency. This is not an insurgency about physical space, but an insurgency about mental space. Moreover, it is an intra-Muslim conflict. Since March 2005, militants have killed more of their co-religionists than they have Buddhists. Put simply, the militants are ideologically and religiously motivated; they are trying to impose a very austere and intolerant form of Islam on their society and they countenance no opposition to this. The militants are going after not just collaborators, or individuals who receive a government salary, but also Muslim clerics who perform funeral rites for murtad, or apostates, as well as teachers who work in schools that have mixed curriculums.
The militants have issued a number of threats to their own community. Such threats include forcing businesses closed on Fridays, with the failure to obey resulting in death or the amputation of ears; militants also warn imams not to conduct funeral rites for Muslim security forces, guards at state-schools, government employees, or "anyone who receive salaries from the state," and warn people not to send their children to state-run schools. These threats are made from a perceived position of strength. The militants have introduced the Wahhabi culture of takfiricondemning fellow Muslims for their lax interpretation of Islam. They seem undeterred that the threats are broadly unpopular among the Muslim population. The militants are not trying to create a mass-based movement, but rather to impose a strict interpretation of Islam on society. They believe that this outcome will strengthen the Muslim community. It appears that their strategy is working since the stream of intelligence from the villages has dried up.
The least likely possibility for the future of Thailand's insurgency is the development of a broader insurgency. This development is unlikely because the insurgents do not have enough personnel, guns or a steady supply of ammunition. The insurgents would also face a more hostile external environment from the Malaysians. Additionally, it is likely that the insurgents understand that a broadened insurgency is one that the Royal Thai Army is the best equipped to counter. An emboldened insurgency would require 1,000 to 2,000 men and significantly more material resources. Moreover, the training and quality of the insurgency to date has wavered. Some groups have improved their hit and run tactics and have begun using a road-side IED with a small arms assault. Yet these improved tactics have not occurred on a regular basis. Indeed, attacks seem disjointed because the cell structure is so compartmentalized and autonomous from the leadership.
The second possibility is for the insurgency to move to the next level by launching attacks on Bangkok or Phuket. This is obviously the nightmare scenario for the government, although one that it vehemently denies is a possibility. To date, the militants have shown an unwillingness to engage in this type of operation. They clearly have the technical capability to undertake such attacks, but are obviously alarmed at the government's reaction to such an operation. There are insurgent leaders, however, who precisely want to provoke a harsh government response that will legitimize them in the eyes of their constituents. Moreover, if the current rate of arrests remains steady, they may engage in terrorism out of desperation. Indeed, there have been a number of arrestsincluding three individuals scouting targets in Bangkok in November 2005suggesting that an attack on an out-of-area soft target is being considered as an option. Such an attack would also attract greater attention and international support for their cause, which, to date, has been negligible.
The third and most plausible possibility is that the conflict remains at the status quo: a low-level insurgency coupled with intensified dakwah (religious propagation activities). It appears that this is the path upon which the insurgents have settled. First, in their eyes it has been very successful. The insurgency is much further along than was expected a year ago. Second, it is within their current range of material and human resources and technical know-how. Third, they need this type of violence within their community to enforce their values.
Yet, this strategy also makes the insurgents vulnerable in a number of ways. First, if they cannot raise the violence to the next level, then it becomes a menace in the region, but one that can be contained and that people learn to live with. Second, it gives the government time to really improve their intelligence operations. For instance, already there is more actionable intelligence that has led to more arrests. Moreover, it gives the government ways to come up with additional counter-insurgent plans, such as the mobile phone registration.
In the face of a government counter-insurgency, the militants can easily retreat back to the mosques and pondoks in which they can recruit and proselytize anew. In such a scenario, the government would declare victory while the insurgency would simply incubate as it did over the past decade.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/30/2006 04:05 ||
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Oil prices of 100$ a bbl would make gas about 4$ a gal. which would suck, but we would live. China on the other hand could not afford 4$ gas, 3$ gas damn near wrecked them. Oil trades on the world market, you cant really control who your oil gets sold to unless you want to take it off the exchange. So for this doomsday scenario, I think it would hurt russia and china even worse than us.
#3
Basically, the scorched-earth "disrupt the oil and attack Israel" policies of Saddam mixed with the "abandon all hope ye who enter" bluster of the Taliban. Remember the horror stories about Afghanistan being the graveyard of armies?
#4
On first inspection, this looks like something cranked out by a first year ROTC cadet. There is no grand strategy, no timetable, no concept of operations, no concern for enemy actions. What is interpreted as asymmetric conflict is, in fact, incompetant planning.
This plan is the work of civilians who have no concept of military realities. I truly hope that this is their basic battle plan. I suspect that indeed, this may be the case.
Before, I have noted that throughout the Middle East, though armies are organized as Corps, Divisions, and Brigades; those words are just words, they have no greater meaning. They do not know *how* to conduct Corps, Division, or even Brigade-level operations. Their hightest functional organization is the Batallion.
This means that a fully-functional Brigade of equal firepower can defeat perhaps two or three of these unorganized Brigades, solely because they have the "magic" of Brigade operations at their disposal. An organized Division can beat a Corps.
Right now, this fact is critically important, because while the US just has three Divisions in Iraq who could be available if Iran attacked that country; we have quietly been training the 9 Iraqi light Divisions in Brigade and Division operations. Already, this means that these Divisions could integrate with the US Divisons to produce the equivalent to five or six fully functional US-quality combat Divisions.
Such a force could overwhelm an Iranian army twice or even three times its current size. Optimized and trained for counter-insurgency operations at that!
This being said, the only weapon of note left to the Iranians, on which is their primary focus, is their ballistic missiles. For this reason, I strongly hope that we have enormous and effective anti-missile resources in theater.
#5
...*low whistle*Holy sweet Jesus. I don't know what scares me more - the fact that it might very well BE their plan, or the fact that they genuinely think it will work.
Anonymoose is correct, but I think he's a bit off in his skill level - a JROTC cadet could have come up with this one. Don't forget that military leadership in Iran is based on political reliability, NOT military competence. Even were it so, the last war these idiots fought was a medium-tech replay of WWI. In reading their Fiendish Plan(TM), I see at least two points where they would just be begging us to cross The Threshhold. They truly have no idea what they are screwing with.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
01/30/2006 12:02 Comments ||
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It is especially interesting to note that it has the approval of President Ahmadinejad, who is believed to be quite delusional and perhaps clinically insane, according to certain psychological profiles I have read. A fanatical lunatic with nuclear arms who truly believes in the apocalypse and the near-term rising of a 10th Century Muslim messiah from the bottom of an Iranian well definitely bodes ill for a great many people."
Well, we can ALL agree on that much.
Gentleman, I should like to remind you all of one of great military author Jeff Coopers axioms of combat:
A poor plan executed quickly will often defeat a brilliant plan executed slowly.
But this means endless amounts of hard work and preparation. Constant self-criticism and a willingness to assume that every bit of luck your enemy hopes for is granted; and every bit that you foolishly allowed into your plan is denied.
Their god of war is Allah, who dictates that might makes right only after the fact. He is a fickle military planner, much like the Roman god Mars: prone to cheap shots and running away at the first sign of defeat. His plan it to "scream and charge," with the promise that "He shall guide your sword."
Our god of war is Helmuth von Moltke: "In the long run, luck is awarded to the efficient."
We have been planning this war since the Shah fell.
The plan is under continual change, improvement, adaptation, and re-evaluation. Intelligence gathered, diplomatic arrangements and protocols long agreed to, bargains within bargains with friend and foe. Spies and special agents in place, secret weapons prepared.
The conclusion to war, if Moltke smiles on us, is a failure of their weapons, a rapid collapse of their resistance, and the disbelief in it all by both their military planners and our own fifth columnists.
Ironically, we look to another German general, Alfred von Schlieffen, the successor to von Moltke, for our reward if we are successful.
Having given a terribly difficult war-planning exercise to the students at the Command and General Staff school, the best student, Erich Ludendorff, worked tirelessly so that he could finish his task in time for Christmas Eve dinner with his family.
von Schlieffen was very impressed with his extraordinary accomplishment and the quality of his plan, so he rewarded him with an even harsher assignment, and with even less time to do it in.
And this will be the reward our military achieves in its success: that the next war for which it will have to prepare will be far greater, and the effort needed to plan for it much harder work.
#8
Iran has, I believe, 14 active Divisions and the IIRG that is less than 12 Divisions in strength. The Iranian Division is about as largs a our Brigade(+). Their current readiness is estimated at less than 60% for their equipment, almost 20% for their aviation. They have less than 60 operational Cobra helicopters and the fixed wing fleet is a mess. What I'm getting at here is they have no real mass to form up and fight against our Armor and Aviation. Combined with the large land mass of Iran they will be forced into asymmetrical war just because of our mass and capabiliy for speed. After the air campaign any convention fight would be clean-up. Even a crazy man will see there is only a few options left to him. The use of a WMD to stop us, or let us roll over their nation and go into an insurgency operation would be about the only thing on his decision tree left.
With all that said he may be crazy but I don't think he will attack. He is happy using Hamas and Hezbollah to fight his wars. It has taken him 25 years to get to this point. He will continue to sabre rattle in an attempt to get the East tired of the US and wear down the coalition. I think he will end up more like Kadaffi, remember him sailing off to do battle with the great Satan, then quietly funding terrorists in Sudan?
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
01/30/2006 14:37 Comments ||
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Frankly, 14 divisions will be 14 soft targets in the coming conflict. The Ashoura blood letting starts on Feb. 9. When they burn out; we flame on.
#10
Article forgot to mention Mucky & the Tater Tots who will jump on the bandwagon as soon as their Iranian masters tell them to. Mucky has already promised to kill another few thousand of his followers if Iran is hit.
Since British troops are in Basra, they'll take the initial gust of the Iranian army at the border and the Tater Tots in the rear. Could be why the Brit government, in the person of Jack Straw, is saying "oh, no, we don't want military action against Iran."
#11
The Brits, Germans, and even the Frenchies have gotta know and believe that once America = Amerika goes down, Western Europe and Westernism = South Vietnam in 1975. The aftermath of Amer Holocaust is Euro- andor Western Holocaust. Iran = NOrth Korea = Rsssia-China, etal. > GREATEST ACE IN THE HOLE ARE ANTI-AMERICAN AMERICAN POLS AND ACTIVISTS.
#12
The MSM and Lefties > PLUTONIUM, NOT URANIUM, is the be-all, end-all proof/evidencia that Iran has WMDS. NO PLUTONIUM = NO WMDS IN IRAN > ERROR-PRONE = WILFUL WARMONGER IMPERIALIST MALE BRUTE FASCIST AMERICA MISTAKENLY GOES TO WAR AGAIN.
A former Palestine Liberation Organization guerrilla who was one of the masterminds of the 1972 terrorist attack on the Munich Olympics in which 11 Israeli athletes were killed said he "regrets nothing" about the incident.
Speaking to Germany's Spiegel TV in an interview released Saturday, Mohammed Oudeh, better known as Abu Daoud, said it was up to Palestinians to "fight as long as it takes Israel to recognize our rights."
"I regret nothing," of the Munich attacks, he said, according to a transcript of the interview released ahead of its broadcast. "You can only dream that I would apologize."
Spiegel TV said they spoke with the 68-year-old, who lives in Damascus, Syria, last week in Cairo.
Daoud was a member of a shadowy Palestinian terrorist group called Black September that took Israeli athletes hostage at the 1972 Olympic Games. Eleven Israelis and a German police officer were killed during a nearly two-day standoff.
Daoud told Spiegel TV he brought the weapons involved in the attack by train from Frankfurt to Munich in various suitcases, then stored them in lockers before distributing them to his team when they arrived. He had previously scouted the Olympic village, and said he had no problem reaching inner areas.
"Nobody checked us," he said.
Daoud reiterated a statement in his 1999 autobiography that the intent was never to kill the Israeli athletes.
He was also quoted as saying the 11 members of the Black September group killed by Israeli agents through the 1970s were the wrong people.
"The people who were shot all had nothing to do with Munich," he said.
German police issued an arrest warrant for Daoud in 1999 after he revealed in his book his role in the attack.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/30/2006 04:14 ||
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Let me state beforehand that I think we should keep the salt shaker handy for this guy ...
A former senior military advisor to Saddam Hussein is warning that the chemical weapons used by top Al Qaida terrorist Abu Musab al Zarqawi in a foiled 2004 plot to attack Amman, Jordan were the same weapons Saddam Hussein transported to Syria before the U.S. invasion.
Gen. Georges Sada offered the stunning revelation Saturday while explaining why he didn't decide to go public about Saddam's hidden WMD stockpile until recently.
"As a general, you see, we should keep our secrets," Gen. Sada told WABC Radio's Monica Crowley. But when news broke of the foiled WMD attack on Amman, he changed his mind.
"I understood that the terrorists were going to make an explosion in Amman in Jordan . . . . and they were targeting the prime minister of Jordan, the intelligence [headquarters] of Jordan, and maybe the American embassy in Jordan - and they were going to use the same chemical weapons which we had in Iraq," he told WABC.
Last week, Gen. Sada generated headlines when he told the New York Sun that Saddam had shipped his biological and chemical weapons stockpiles to Syria in the weeks before the U.S. attacked in March 2003.
But until yesterday, the former top Iraqi official had said nothing about al Qaida gaining access to those same weapons.
"It was a major, major operation. It would have decapitated the government," said Jordan's King Abdullah at the time, in an interview about the Zarqawi plot with the San Francisco Chronicle.
Had it succeeded, the WMD strike would have been the most deadly terrorist attack in world history, with Jordanian officials estimating that Zarqawi's al Qaida team could have killed up to 20,000 people.
While King Abdullah said that trucks containing chemical weapons had come from Syria, he did not identify Iraq as the ultimate source of Zarqawi's WMDs.
Gen. Sada, however, said he had no doubt that Zarqawi intended to use the same chemical weapons Saddam had sent to Syria.
Telling Crowley that he was "shocked" when news of the Zarqawi plot broke, Saddam's former top advisor recalled thinking: "My God, I know many things. How can I keep them [secret any longer]."
Gen. Sada also detailed on Saturday the Iraqi dictator's plan to launch his own WMD attack during the first Gulf War, explaining, "He wanted to attack Israel with chemical weapons."
The top Iraqi military man recalled a meeting of senior defense ministers where Saddam ordered: "I want you to do two things that are very important - to attack Israel and to attack Saudi Arabia with chemical weapons."
Gen. Sada said the planned WMD strike was to be carried out by 98 aircraft, including Soviet-built Sukhoi 24s, MiGs and French-built Mirage jets.
"One wave would fly through Syria and the other wave through Jordan and then penetrate to Israel," he said.
Gen. Sada recalled that he was the only one to raise objections, warning Saddam that such an attack would surely provoke a nuclear response from Tel Aviv.
"I told all this directly [to Saddam] and everybody was listening. If a needle was dropped on the carpet you would hear it," he told Crowley.
After presenting a nearly two-hour-long argument against the WMD attack, Gen. Sada said Saddam was finally persuaded to pull the plug on the deadly operation.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/30/2006 03:38 ||
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Well, I think the story the Jordanians came up with about the weapons all being homebrews are inconsistent with what they initially reported the scale of the attacks to be.
Posted by: Phil ||
01/30/2006 4:13 Comments ||
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The homebrew story just wasn't plausible. Nobody would mix together 40 or 50 chemicals together as the Jordanians reported. It smacked of a made up story by someone who knew nothing about Chemistry.
#4
20,000 potential casualties makes good propaganda. My take is that it was a truckload of acids and industrial chemicals. The contents were never released because people would realize the claims were way overinflated.
Posted by: ed ||
01/30/2006 8:51 Comments ||
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If it really were a Junior Science Fair level bomb, would the Syrians have allowed it to go forward from their own soil?
Posted by: Phil ||
01/30/2006 9:11 Comments ||
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What do you mean the Syrians allowed it to go forward? The "bomb" was never built. The chemicals were raided in a Jordanian warehouse. Some of the chemicals were shipped in from Syria, but mixing a few noxious chemicals do not make a chemical weapon. PS. The original claim was 80,000 casualties.
'WMD terrorism': Sum of all fears doesn't always add up The defense attorneys aren't alone in scoffing at the "WMD" claim. International experts checking the suspects' supposed list of chemicals from the industrial compound ammonium to the explosive nitroglycerin say either the defendants or the Jordanian authorities, or both, had little inkling about the makings of a chemical weapon.
The compounds "may generate some toxic byproducts, but they're unlikely to result in significant deaths by poisoning," said Ron G. Manley of Britain, a former senior U.N. adviser on chemical weapons.
Posted by: ed ||
01/30/2006 9:27 Comments ||
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#7
The compounds "may generate some toxic byproducts, but they're unlikely to result in significant deaths by poisoning," said Ron G. Manley of Britain, a former senior U.N. adviser on chemical weapons.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has used her first visit to Israel to deliver a strong criticism of Iran, saying it threatens not only the Jewish state but the entire democratic world.
Noticed that, did you?
Ms Merkel spoke after meeting interim Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who expressed Israel's concern at Iran's nuclear program. She says Germany and Israel are in total agreement on the subject of Tehran's plans to produce nuclear fuel by enriching uranium, a process of purifying uranium for use in atomic power plants or weapons. Israel sees Iran's nuclear program as a threat to its existence and has even hinted that it could use military force to prevent Tehran from getting a bomb.
Nice to see that at least one Euro has noticed that Iran's also a threat to European existence. I'm not sure what part of "world domination" the rest of them can't comprehend.
Ms Merkel also condemned Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for his anti-Israeli remarks. "It's unacceptable that Iran's president rejects and falsifies history," she said.
And we thought Julius Streicher was dead...
Mr Olmert thanked Ms Merkel for supporting Israel on the question of Iran's nuclear program, saying: "It is a topic that causes great concern here in Israel".
Since they're the first target...
Germany, France and Britain have been trying for more than two years to persuade Tehran to give up enrichment in exchange for political and economic incentives but Iran has refused. The EU3 have now joined Washington in calling for the United Nations Security Council, which has the power to impose sanctions, to take up the matter. On Monday, senior EU3 officials meet with US, Russian and Chinese officials in London to discuss Iran.
Vlad and Hu don't think "world domination" includes them...
On the same day, Iran will meet diplomats from Britain, France and Germany in Brussels, a Tehran Foreign Ministry spokesman says. Iran insisted on Sunday the only solution to its nuclear dispute with the West was negotiations rather than referral of its atomic dossier to the United Nations Security Council. "The only way to reach an understanding and to get out of the current situation is talks," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told a weekly news conference in Tehran.
If you yap continuously for three years and nothing comes of it, people are going to wonder if anything's going to happen in year four. Personally, I have my doubts.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/30/2006 00:00 ||
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You know how you can almost smell a coming rain on a humid day? I can smell a decisive neutralization of the Mullatocracy. Check out this book: The Winning Weapon: The Atomic Bomb in the Cold War, 1945-1950 Gregg Herken (ISBN: 0691022860)
The rarity of an Osama bin Laden commentary (one year after the last broadcast in December 2004) is stirring a wealth of commentary in the world's media. The focus is on its veracity and on the implications for the West of the truce offer coupled with a threat should it be rejected. Yet for the mujahideen, while many of the concerns are similar, there is also both considerable relief at the re-appearance of bin Ladenhis absence from the airwaves was causing some distress on the internet forumsand eulogistic celebration of the genius of the "Artful Arab."
The rarity and brevity of the bin Laden message, and even the low production quality of the tape, justify for the mujahideen a detailed examination of its contents. The promise of an imminent strike on the United States is creating much excitement, but it is the issue of the truce that excites the most extended discussions. For Dr. Muhammad Hafiz, a participant on the al-Saqifa forum (www.alsakifah.org/vb), writing on January 20, the issue of the truce is the main interest. Taking up bin Laden's phrase that "We have no objection to responding to you about a long term truce according to just conditions which we would honor, for we are a Nation whom God has forbidden to use treachery or deceit," Dr. Hafiz underlines the moral superiority that Muslims could thus claim, in that "in war or peace they never engage in treachery."
Interestingly, this argument was disputed, to a chorus of loathing, by one signing himself Ibn Umar al-Hajj, who noted how the 9/11 hijackers had actually breached these conditions by employing deception in using their Saudi passports to gain entry visas, all of which come under Islamic regulations on strict observance of the ahd ("compact") with an enemy. Dr. Hafiz elaborates on the meaning of the truce offer: first, for bin Laden to present himself as "a statesman capable of offering a truce from a position of strength"; second, to pre-empt Bush from pulling American forces out of Iraq without an admission of defeat; third, "to absolve himself before God and the world prior to the coming strike inside America which will shake it to its foundations." In short, it is part of the established warning cycle.
While Western observers may point to bin Laden's inability to declare a truce on operational groundsgiven the fact that, contrary to bin Laden's assurances in the tape, Spanish intelligence forces have had to foil recurrent attempts at attacks since the April 2004 Madrid bombingsIbn Umar cast his doubts in terms of Islamic law. "Does bin Laden represent himself," he asks, "or al-Qaeda, or all Muslims? It is actually the Amir al-Muslimeen [Mulla Umar] who is the only one qualified to offer a truce in the name of the Nation."
For Nusayr Muhyi al-Sunan, writing on the same forum, the point has been reversed: there is no legitimacy problem for bin Laden declaring a truce since he is actually turning down an appeal for a truce made by the United States. As evidence, he points to bin Laden's use of the term ijabatikum ("responding to you") in his statement above: "a response, as is well known, only comes to a previous request." Others still underscore the actual impossibility of a truce, other than as a military tactic. "The Sheikh [bin Laden] cannot alter this path honored by God," writes an analyst and writer signing himself "Hussein bin Mahmud." "For this path is the Qur'an and the Sunna: And fight them until tumult is no more, and religion is all for Allah" (Qur'an VIII, 39). "This a matter of war and deception," he continues, "Bin Laden has never, and will never, offer peace to the infidel." There is a difference, he explains, between peace and a truce: "A truce is conditional upon just conditions," but "since the belief and the policy of the infidel is built only upon tyranny," such justice "can only be [made if it is] in the interest of the Islamic Nation." A truce, therefore, so construed "can only be understood by one who understands the true nature of the struggle."
In fact, bin Laden's genius, according to this analysis, is in cornering the enemy into being unable to respond either way to the tape. Indeed, the threat of an attack, bin Mahmud insists, has already achieved its purpose. It keeps the Americans "living in fear, exhausting themselves and expending resources on [contingency] planning, divided their ranks and damaged their economy." Yet, according to this argument, the Americans cannot afford to ignore the new threat, "which will have the same effect on them!" As to the form of the coming attack: "it will be a light or moderate blow, designed to show them his capability and the seriousness of the issue; an unexpected type of attack, revealing the inventiveness of the soldiers of Islam, following which it will be of a wholly different order" (www.alsakifah.org/vb).
Both jihadi and Western analysts lay emphasis on the importance of the audio recording for morale boosting purposes. From postings such as the above, however, an important significance of the "four minutes that shook the world" audiotape is not only that bin Laden is alive, but also that the religiously defined strategy toward dominion remains intact. "The secret of the tape," bin Mahmud insists, is as a confirmation of God's words on infidels spending their wealth to impede the jihad: "They will spend it, then it will become an anguish for them, then they will be conquered." (Qur'an VIII, 36). The "anguish," he explains, is that the millions spent by the enemy have been overturned by a "cheaply made, technologically rough tape." In other words, it is an epoch-making demonstration of triumphant asymmetric warfare.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/30/2006 04:07 ||
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Al-Qaeda's second-in-command, Egyptian national Ayman al-Zawahiri, appeared in a video-recording broadcast by al-Jazeera news network on January 6. What is striking in this statement is his discussion of reform and freedom in the Arab and Islamic worlds.
In his latest statement, al-Zawahiri discusses reform and freedom in the Arab world, and draws a connection between jihad and freedoma new element in al-Qaeda's discourse. He stated, "My Muslim nation, you will not enjoy free elections, protected sanctity, governments which are being called to account by the people and a respectable judiciary unless you are free from the crusader-Zionist occupation and the corrupted governments, and this will not be fulfilled but with Jihad." He criticized the Muslim Brotherhood experience in Egypt because they believe in political participation. This is, by the way, an old opinion of al-Zawahiri, who wrote a book on the political experience of the Muslim Brotherhood entitled "Bitter Harvest." He also criticized elections in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and described the democratic developments in the Arab World as "the fractions of freedom that America allows by force, and which wouldn't be allowed unless under mujahideen attack in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Palestine."
What is interesting is the new linkage between jihad and issues of freedom, rights, and the integrity of the judiciary. It seems al-Qaeda is keen to address the frustration in the Arab world that stems from the absence, or slow pace, of political and economic reform. This was clear in the results of the online poll conducted by aljazeera.net. In response to the question, "Do you agree with al-Zawahiri's statement?" 57.9% agreed with the statement, 25.7% disagreed, and 16.3% partially agreed. The number of respondents totaled 30,487.
These numbers indicate that al-Zawahiri's criticism of reform in the Arab and Islamic worlds resonates among lay people. It shows that al-Qaeda's change of discourse aims at winning public opinion and at increasing the number of sympathizers more than an attempt to stress its ideological tenets, especially since the issue of "public opinion" has never been a major priority with the Salafi-Jihadist movement in general. It appears that this is the new element in al-Qaeda's coming statements because the movement is attempting to adapt with the present and future pressures.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/30/2006 04:06 ||
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Abu Khabab al-Masri, the unconventional weapons specialist of al-Qaeda, was killed in the January 13 airstrike at Damadola in Pakistan. His death, reported by the Pakistani daily Dawn (www.dawn.com) quoting security sources, is especially important given Osama bin Laden's January 19 audiotape in which he spoke of operations underway in the United States. Many conceive that a possible attack from bin Laden will take the form of an unconventional device of some sort, and the prospect of such an attack, according to newly-appointed head of counter-terrorism at the U.S. State Department Henry Crumpton, is considered merely "a question of time."
The 53-year old Egyptian national Abu Khabab (full name: Midhat Mursi al-Sayyid 'Umar) was of pivotal importance in the development of al-Qaeda's unconventional capability, and the training of large numbers of operatives in the requisite skills, an importance reflected by the US$5 million reward posted for his arrest. Abu Khabab's jihad activity goes back to the period of the assassination of Anwar Sadat in October 1981 as a senior member of Egyptian Islamic Jihad. His importance to the developing al-Qaeda movement was recognized early. He played a senior role after August 1998 when, following the destruction of the al-Shifa facility in Sudan (suspected of the manufacture of chemical weapons), he set up and ran the unconventional weapons program Project al-Zabadi ("Yoghurt") in Afghanistan.
As director of the Derunta camp situated near Jalalabad, Abu Khabab is said to have tested nerve gas and to have conducted filmed experiments with cyanide on dogs. The most famous alumnus of Derunta was the "millennium bomber" Ahmed Ressam, convicted in July 2005 for a plot to bomb Los Angeles Airport on New Year's Eve 1999. Ressam mentioned that al-Qaeda was testing toxins at the camp for use in assassination attempts of Western political and intelligence officials and that many students were being trained from all over the world. From this period Abu Khabab had been active in publishing and distributing training manuals that contained recipes for crude chemical and biological weapons.
Following U.S. Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, Abu Khabab dropped off the radar, although his name appeared in investigations into several attempted unconventional weapons attacks, such as the failed chemical and poison attacks in Europe in the run-up to the coalition intervention against Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Some of the arrested suspects in these attacks had received training in the Caucasus, confirming information that successors to the Afghan Derunta camp had been set up in the Pankisi Gorge in Georgia.
The most serious attempt at an unconventional weapons attack from jihadist extremists was the April 2004 incident in the Jordanian capital Amman, where government estimates put the potential casualty rate of al-Zarqawi's aide Azmi al-Jayyousi's targeting of the key installations in the city at 20,000 plus. Abu Khabab's involvement in this plot is suspected but not proven. Yet until Abu Khabab's death, "Project al-Zabadi" was considered to be still in operation in one form or another.
The New York Post indicated in December 2003 that a full-scale manhunt was underway for Abu Khabab, motivated by suspicions that the Egyptian scientist was actively engaged in the construction of a "dirty bomb" for use on attacks in the United States. The Pakistan bomb strike at Damadola, therefore, appears to be a significant operational success. Abu Khabab's value to the jihad is his pivotal role in turning one of many of al-Qaeda's wish lists into practical advances in the production of unconventional weaponry. The question remains about the numbers and expertise of Abu Khabab's students from camps in Afghanistan, Georgia and Pakistan that are still at large.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/30/2006 04:04 ||
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The amount of assets frozen by U.S. anti-terrorism units is declining dramatically each year, prompting a former Bush administration official who helped oversee the program to suggest that a "lack of urgency" is hurting efforts to block terrorist fundraising.
"This strategy is an important component of the overall anti-terror strategy," says Jimmy Gurule, a former Treasury Department undersecretary for enforcement. "What I've witnessed is very, very disturbing."
Treasury officials reject his criticism and say the decline in blocked assets is not an accurate measure of the effort against terrorism funding.
Efforts by the United States and its allies to pursue the assets of individuals, charities and groups with suspected ties to terrorists began under a presidential directive after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. It has been a key part of the Bush administration's strategy to make it more difficult for terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda to get money to operatives.
In the 16 weeks after the 9/11 attacks, 157 suspected terrorism fundraisers were identified and assets valued at $68 million were frozen. The numbers fell after the initial rush by authorities. However, Gurule says the totals for 2005 $4.9 million frozen in the accounts of 32 suspects or organizations suggest the effort is losing intensity because of a lack of help from foreign governments and an uneven commitment by the U.S. government to monitor suspicious transactions at financial institutions in the USA and abroad.
"The strategy needs to be re-evaluated, restructured and refocused," says Gurule, who left the Bush administration in 2003 and is a law professor at the University of Notre Dame. "It's time for an overhaul."
Stuart Levey, Treasury's undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, says many of the program's successes cannot be disclosed because they are part of classified operations. He says evidence of the effort's success came from senior members of al-Qaeda. Levey says that in correspondence intercepted last year, Ayman al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden's top deputy, asked Iraqi insurgent leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi for $100,000. Al-Zawahri said "many of the lines" for financial help "have been cut off."
Levey also cites the 9/11 Commission's recent evaluation of the government's strategy against terrorism funding, which the panel gave a grade of A-minus. It was the highest score awarded in the commission's wide-ranging and mostly critical report on federal anti-terrorism efforts. The report did include some criticism of the push to go after terrorists' assets, however.
"The government has made significant strides in using terrorism financing as an intelligence tool," the report said. "However, the State Department and Treasury Department are engaged in unhelpful turf battles, and the overall effort is lacking leadership."
In October, the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, concluded that Treasury "lacks meaningful performance measures to assess its terrorist designation and asset blocking efforts." Levey says the GAO's findings are getting "high-level attention" at State and Treasury. "We are trying to react to improve our effort."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/30/2006 03:33 ||
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The intelligence services have uncovered increasing evidence that an al-Qaeda mastermind was behind the July 7 suicide bombings in London. Despite a leaked secret report dated last October, three months after the attacks, which indicated that little had been learnt of the background to the plot, more recent discoveries have produced firmer links between the four British bombers and al-Qaeda.
The biggest question for MI5 and police has been whether the London bombings were conceived and planned entirely in Britain or whether there was outside influence, some form of mastermind supplying expertise, money and planning.
Security sources said for the first time yesterday that the intelligence services were closer to answering the key questions, providing evidence of a foreign connection, linking the London bombers to terrorists in Pakistan. The results of the six-month inquiry, which has included visits to Pakistan by MI5 officers and police counter-terrorist specialists, will be laid out in a detailed report in April by the parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee, headed by Paul Murphy, the former Northern Ireland Secretary. Security sources said yesterday that enormous progress had been made since October, when, according to the document published in The Sunday Times, there were still huge gaps in intelligence. Sources said that the report was based on an analysis of the facts and at that time there were no real clues about a foreign connection other than the known visits to Pakistan by two of the suicide bombers.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/30/2006 03:24 ||
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#1
....will be laid out in a detailed report in April by the parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee, headed by Paul Murphy, the former Northern Ireland Secretary.
Nice werk Murph, that must have been a giant leap.
For more than a decade, Osama bin Laden had few soldiers more devoted than Abdallah Tabarak. A former Moroccan transit worker, Tabarak served as a bodyguard for the al Qaeda leader, worked on his farm in Sudan and helped run a gemstone smuggling racket in Afghanistan, court records here show.
During the battle of Tora Bora in December 2001, when al Qaeda leaders were pinned down by U.S. forces, Tabarak sacrificed himself to engineer their escape. He headed toward the Pakistani border while making calls on Osama bin Laden's satellite phone as bin Laden and the others fled in the other direction.
Tabarak was captured and taken to the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he was classified as such a high-value prisoner that the Pentagon repeatedly denied requests by the International Committee of the Red Cross to see him. Then, after spending almost three years at the base, he was suddenly released.
Today, the al Qaeda loyalist known locally as the "emir" of Guantanamo walks the streets of his old neighborhood near Casablanca, more or less a free man. In a decision that neither the Pentagon nor Moroccan officials will explain publicly, Tabarak was transferred to Morocco in August 2004 and released from police custody four months later.
Tabarak's odyssey from Afghanistan to Guantanamo and back to his native land illustrates the grit and at times fanatical determination of one bin Laden recruit. Yet his story also shows how little is known publicly about al Qaeda figures who were captured after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and the Pentagon. Major gaps remain in his account, and terrorism experts and intelligence officials continue to debate whether he was a member of al Qaeda's inner circle or its rank and file.
His case also highlights mysteries of U.S. priorities in deciding who to keep and who to let go. As the Pentagon gears up to hold its first military tribunals at Guantanamo after four years of preparations, it has released a prisoner it called a key operative. At the same time, it retains under heavy guard men whose background and significance are never discussed.
Eighteen months after he left Guantanamo, Tabarak, 50, still faces minor criminal offenses in Rabat, the capital, such as passport forgery and conspiracy. But his attorney predicts that it's only a matter of time before the case is dropped and all allegations of terrorist activities are dismissed.
The attorney, Abdelfattah Zahrach, said his client's importance as an al Qaeda figure has been exaggerated, although he acknowledged that Tabarak knew bin Laden and worked for one of his companies.
"He was in bin Laden's environment, but he didn't play an operational role," Zahrach said. "Do you think that if he was really the bodyguard of bin Laden that the Americans would have let him come back to Morocco?"
A review of Moroccan court documents, including records of his interrogations by Moroccan investigators, shows the U.S. military had good reason to consider Tabarak a valuable catch. In addition to his firsthand knowledge of how bin Laden survived Tora Bora, he had worked for the al Qaeda leader since 1989 and was often at his side as he built the terrorist network from bases in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Sudan.
According to the documents, details of which other foreign intelligence officials confirmed, Tabarak served as a jack-of-all-trades for members of the inner circle. For several years, he received his orders and a regular salary from Saeed Masri, an al Qaeda financier, military training camp leader and relative of bin Laden.
Tabarak also dedicated his family to the cause. One daughter, Asia, married a top al Qaeda operations commander, Abu Feraj Libi, who was captured in Pakistan in May 2005 and is blamed for assassination plots against Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf.
A son, Omar, fought alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan in late 2001 and was captured by Afghan allies of the Americans. When he was released in a prisoner swap, bin Laden threw a feast to celebrate, according to Tabarak's statements to interrogators.
Defense Department officials declined to say why Tabarak was released from Guantanamo, in August 2004, when he and four other Moroccan detainees were handed over to authorities in Rabat. "The decision to transfer or release a detainee is based on many factors, including whether the detainee is of further intelligence value to the United States and whether the detainee is believed to pose a continuing threat to the United States if released," said Navy Lt. Cmdr. J.D. Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman.
According to interviews in Rabat with people who are familiar with Tabarak's case, however, Moroccan officials had pressed the U.S. military for many months to hand over Tabarak, arguing that they would have a better chance of persuading him to reveal secrets about al Qaeda.
Moroccan interrogators visited Tabarak and other Moroccan detainees at Guantanamo on two occasions and urged them to cooperate, according to his attorney and two fellow prisoners. "They came to see us and brought us coffee and sandwiches," said Mohammed Mazouz, one of the Moroccans who was later released with Tabarak. "But the Americans, they would just abuse us."
During a courtroom appearance in Rabat last year, Tabarak looked gaunt and wore a black baseball cap low on his forehead. After consenting to an interview through his attorney, he changed his mind at the last minute; guards in the courthouse audibly warned him not to speak with an American reporter.
In interviews with Arab journalists, Tabarak has given conflicting accounts, sometimes denying membership in al Qaeda or ties to bin Laden. But interrogation records show that he has described in detail to authorities a long and intimate connection with the network.
He left Morocco in 1989, he has said, on the advice of a mentor from a Casablanca mosque who urged him to become involved with Islamic fighters who were battling the communist-backed Afghan government.
After first making a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia, Tabarak recounted, he traveled to Pakistan, a staging area for guerrillas fighting in Afghanistan, and joined bin Laden's network. He received military training at two camps near Khost, Afghanistan, and met with bin Laden at a guest house in the Pakistani city of Peshawar.
Tabarak told his interrogators that he received the equivalent of $250 a month to help funnel foreign fighters into Afghanistan. When Pakistani authorities decided to crack down on outsiders in their country, he followed bin Laden to Sudan. There he worked on a farm raising cattle, served as a bodyguard and performed other tasks.
By the time bin Laden returned to Afghanistan in 1996, Tabarak was taking on more important roles. He said he worked for a while in a "precious stones" smuggling operation that raised money for al Qaeda. Eventually, he joined bin Laden's personal security detail, accompanying the Saudi on trips across the country to meet with other figures from al Qaeda and the Taliban movement.
Tabarak said he had no warning of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks but helped protect bin Laden after U.S. forces went to war in Afghanistan the following month. He said he spent 20 days hiding with bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders in Tora Bora, in rugged mountainous terrain near the Pakistani border, as U.S. forces and their Afghan militia proxies closed in.
According to Moroccan and other foreign intelligence officials, Tabarak sacrificed himself so the others could escape. He took bin Laden's satellite phone, which the al Qaeda leader apparently assumed was being tracked by U.S. spy technology, and walked toward the Pakistani border as the al Qaeda leadership fled in the opposite direction. The ruse worked, although Tabarak and others were captured.
"I escaped as part of a group that included mostly Saudis and Yemenis towards Pakistan, until we were arrested by Pakistani authorities at a border crossing point and then afterwards handed over to American authorities," he told Moroccan interrogators in August 2004.
Zahrach, Tabarak's attorney, confirmed that his client was caught near the border and handed over to the U.S. military. But he denied Tabarak helped bin Laden escape from Tora Bora. He dismissed the interrogation reports as forgeries. He said Moroccan officials have no evidence for their allegations but are too embarrassed to admit it.
"They have to charge him with something in Morocco to prevent him from talking," Zahrach said. "They have to keep him tied up in court and keep him under pressure." Tabarak's next scheduled court appearance is Friday in Rabat. Officials with the Moroccan Communications Ministry declined to comment on the case.
Mohammed Darif, a Moroccan terrorism analyst and political science professor, said Moroccan intelligence officials have overstated Tabarak's role in al Qaeda. He said bin Laden relied almost exclusively on fellow Saudis and tribal relatives from Yemen to provide for his personal safety and was unlikely to accept an uneducated, poor Moroccan into his inner circle.
"People who have known him all along say that Tabarak was a serious player but that perhaps his reputation is a little overblown," said Darif, who interviewed Tabarak after his release from Guantanamo. "He may have been a loyal worker, but he's not sophisticated. When you talk to him, you see pretty clearly that the guy does not have a strong personality."
But other intelligence sources in Europe and the Middle East suggest that his behavior at Guantanamo is further confirmation of his importance. There, they say, he developed a reputation as a tough-minded leader among the detainees. Moroccan officials have described him as an "emir" of the camp who resisted his American interrogators and catalyzed hunger strikes among prisoners.
Defense Department memos obtained by The Washington Post in 2004 show that Guantanamo officials repeatedly prevented inspectors from the International Committee of the Red Cross from seeing Tabarak.
Although the Red Cross was supposed to have access to all persons in military custody, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller told Red Cross inspectors on Oct. 9, 2003, that they could not visit Tabarak or three other detainees "because of military necessity," according to the memos. On a follow-up visit Feb. 2, 2004, Miller informed Red Cross officials that they could see anyone at the base, except Tabarak. Miller once again cited "military necessity." A Defense Department spokesman declined to comment on the memos.
Tabarak has told his attorney and other detainees that he was kept in an isolation cell during most of his stay at Guantanamo. For about one year, he said, he was interrogated only while blindfolded, so he could not see his captors or even know for certain if he was in Cuba or another country.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/30/2006 03:21 ||
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Mohammed Darif, a Moroccan terrorism analyst and political science professor, said Moroccan intelligence officials have overstated Tabarak's role in al Qaeda. He said bin Laden relied almost exclusively on fellow Saudis and tribal relatives from Yemen to provide for his personal safety and was unlikely to accept an uneducated, poor Moroccan into his inner circle.
Uh huh... and Zarqawi was a gravity physicist and scion of an impossibly wealthy family. I mean, really- who do you get to do personal security? Big Moe, who's just a bit slow. Loyal to a fault, and won't give up the secrets because he doesn't understand them.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
The Afghan authorities and the international community should reach out to the Taliban if they want to keep the political process on track, according to one of the chief architects of the troubled Islamic republics transition.
Kuwait's parliament confirmed Sunday Prime Minister Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah as the new emir, ending an unprecedented political crisis which has divided the ruling family of the Gulf state.
There is little left of the Orthodox Church establishment in Chechnya. Most of Chechnya's ethnic Russian Christian minority fled in the early 1990s during the creation of Dzhokar Dudaev's independent Chechen state. The onset of war in 1994 found only the aged and the impoverished remaining of Grozny's Orthodox population, most of whom suffered greatly in the Russian bombing raids. Grozny's Church of the Archangel Mikhail, once a symbol of Orthodoxy's triumph in the Caucasus, is slowly being restored after its destruction by the Russian military in 1995. Reduced to a shell, its congregation consists today of a few hundred aged and hungry pensioners.
Osama bin Laden's offer of a truce has sunk from sight without leaving a ripple, but it should have made waves. When the audiotaped proposal was made 10 days ago, the White House dismissed it out of hand. That was a politically logical move, given the need to appear tough on terror at all times. An image of strength and determination may be particularly important in the months ahead because Republican Party leaders have put security issues at the heart of their 2006 congressional election campaign strategy.
4 generations of 
CARACAS, Venezuela Jan 29, 2006 Cindy Sheehan, the peace activist who set up camp near President Bush's Texas ranch last summer, said Saturday she is considering running against Sen. Dianne Feinstein to protest what she called the California lawmaker's support for the war in Iraq. 
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice leaves on Sunday for a 36-hour trip to London where she will attend a series of meetings on Afghanistan, Hamas and Iran. The top US diplomat is due to arrive in the British capital late Sunday and has a meeting scheduled mid-Monday with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, in town for a conference of donors to Afghanistan on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Pakistan's military spokesman said on Sunday he had no knowledge of a report that two years ago a delay by Pakistan in giving clearance for a U.S. airstrike gave time for Osama bin Laden to escape.
NEW DELHI India will not be pressured into voting against Iran over its suspect nuclear programme at this weeks meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh said yesterday. We will do what is right for the country. Indias national interest is the prime concern whether it is domestic or foreign policy, Singh told reporters in New Delhi, the Press Trust of India (PTI) news agency reported.
President Gen Pervez Musharraf has condemned the Bajaur air strike, calling it a violation of Pakistans sovereignty and stating that the attack was not coordinated with Islamabad. 
Saddam Hussein's trial collapsed into chaos shortly after resuming Sunday, with one defendant dragged out of court and the defense team walking out in protest. The former Iraqi leader was then escorted out after he shouted "down with traitors" and refused his new court-appointed lawyers.
JERUSALEM -- The incoming Hamas government will move quickly to make Islamic sharia "a source" of law in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and will overhaul the Palestinian education system to separate boys and girls and introduce a more Islamic curriculum, a senior official in the movement said yesterday.
Israeli security bodies started an internal investigation for its failure to predict the the sweeping victory of Hamas in the Palestinian legislative elections. According to the Israeli media, Israeli government sources criticized the Israeli security bodies for their failure to analyze the possibility of a Hamas victory and its vital impacts. The Israeli Haaretz daily reported that most of the intelligence analyses which were submitted to the Israeli cabinet indicated the possibility of a Hamas victory in the elections. It added that the military intelligence and internal security bodies predicted the slight victory of Fatah. The Israeli security bodies affirmed that their dependency on the Palestinian opinion polls before the elections was a major mistake especially that the polls failed to predict the victory of Hamas in the elections.
The Palestinian National Liberation Movement (Fatah) Central Committee decided on Sunday to dismiss 76 of its members after running as independent candidates in the latest Palestinian Legislative Council's (PLC) elections. The dismissed persons included six members of Fatah's Revolutionary Council -- Burhan Jarrar, Ahmad Al-Deek, Fayez Zaidan, Nahedh Al-Raees, Fakhri Shaqourah and Saleem Al-Zaree'e. As it is the mediator between Fatah's Central Committee and General-Assembly, the Revolutionary Council is a key body in the movement.
Deputies from Fatah confirmed on Sunday that the beleaguered faction would not join Hamas in a coalition government after the radical Islamists' sensational election victory. We have a decision from all the Fatah leadership not to enter the new government, said deputy Abdullah Abdullah after holding talks with Abbas at his West Bank headquarters. By giving Hamas a majority, the Palestinian people gave them a mandate to form the new government and we will be a positive opposition, he told AFP.
The Palestinian Central Elections Commission has made a slight revision to the result of last week's general election, reducing by two the number of seats won by Hamas. 
German Chancellor 
The intelligence services have uncovered increasing evidence that an al-Qaeda mastermind was behind the July 7 suicide bombings in London. Despite a leaked secret report dated last October, three months after the attacks, which indicated that little had been learnt of the background to the plot, more recent discoveries have produced firmer links between the four British bombers and al-Qaeda.
