Hi there, !
Today Sun 02/15/2004 Sat 02/14/2004 Fri 02/13/2004 Thu 02/12/2004 Wed 02/11/2004 Tue 02/10/2004 Mon 02/09/2004 Archives
Rantburg
531202 articles and 1854407 comments are archived on Rantburg.

Today: 62 articles and 545 comments as of 2:17.
Post a news link    Post your own article   
Area:                    
Abizaid Unhurt in Attack, Press Disappointed
Today's Headlines
Headline Comments [Views]
Page 1: WoT Operations
0 [336070] 
3 00:00 tu3031 [336089] 
0 [336066] 
2 00:00 Barbara Skolaut [336089] 
2 00:00 Lucky [336091] 
0 [336084] 
0 [336066] 
3 00:00 Tresho [336097] 
4 00:00 GK [336075] 
9 00:00 Cyber Sarge [336091] 
1 00:00 Robert Crawford [336070] 
11 00:00 Lucky [336095] 
4 00:00 Jarhead [336067] 
4 00:00 john bragg [336095] 
3 00:00 Old Patriot [336078] 
1 00:00 Hiryu [336066] 
10 00:00 eLarson [336080] 
0 [336068] 
12 00:00 eLarson [336074] 
2 00:00 Paul Moloney [336108] 
69 00:00 B [336090] 
1 00:00 john [336096] 
11 00:00 Jarhead [336070] 
1 00:00 Mike Sylwester [336066] 
7 00:00 Lucky [336127] 
11 00:00 Atomic Conspiracy [336069] 
10 00:00 john [336090] 
5 00:00 Anonymous2U [336088] 
9 00:00 Shipman [336064] 
6 00:00 tu3031 [336093] 
36 00:00 tu3031 [336088] 
15 00:00 dataman1 [336068] 
1 00:00 cingold [336075] 
2 00:00 SON OF TOLUI [336095] 
1 00:00 Robert Crawford [336070] 
3 00:00 Dan [336098] 
0 [336069] 
10 00:00 tu3031 [336093] 
0 [336071] 
9 00:00 Shipman [336072] 
3 00:00 Old Patriot [336071] 
41 00:00 chainey [336095] 
51 00:00 whitecollar redneck [336076] 
5 00:00 GK [336075] 
3 00:00 Shipman [336069] 
35 00:00 Anonymous [336095] 
36 00:00 Atomic Conspiracy [336076] 
2 00:00 B [336068] 
2 00:00 Shipman [336068] 
3 00:00 Lucky [336073] 
2 00:00 Old Patriot [336068] 
0 [336068] 
3 00:00 Old Patriot [336073] 
20 00:00 Lil Dhimmi [336072] 
8 00:00 Anonymous2U [336072] 
0 [336068] 
1 00:00 CrazyFool [336066] 
3 00:00 mhw [336067] 
16 00:00 Rafael [336068] 
14 00:00 Lucky [336089] 
1 00:00 Mike Sylwester [336073] 
7 00:00 tu3031 [336096] 
A FAQ Outline on Iraq, WMD, and the War on Terror
A while back I started writing an outline of some of my thoughts regarding the Iraqi campaign in the war on terror, and the issue of the WMD; you can find the previous draft here. I will probably be writing another revision this weekend, if I ever get around to fixing the computer I have most of the data on. If anyone here has any constructive suggestions or criticisms, or pointers to more sources, please let me know. I didn’t think, back in December, that it would be this long when I started it.

My main motive when I started this was to try to put some of the data floating around out there (and at this site) into some sort of structure. I was putting off posting this request, but since it seems today has degenerated into arguments about bimbo eruptions, I thought I might as well try to drag things back on topic. (Even if I thought the tomato/ketchup joke was funny). Thanks for your time.
I dunno, Phil. Looks like you're gonna be writing a book...
Posted by: Phil Fraering || 02/12/2004 6:23:00 PM || Comments || Link || [336091 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Fred: That's what I was scared of. Also, it seems that whatever relevance a lot of the information had may now be passing: what we have discovered re: Malaysian centrifuges and Libyan (among others, apparently) bomb programs might make arguments over whether or not Iraq had binary nerve agents and mustard gasses relatively unimportant.
Posted by: Phil Fraering || 02/12/2004 19:02 Comments || Top||

#2  Phil you've got a handful there. My eys couldn't grasp it this late. But a work of art or history needs patience and a willingness to make it right. Good luck and I look forward to the prose.
Posted by: Lucky || 02/12/2004 23:40 Comments || Top||


Barbie and Ken: It’s Over
Real news on the sensitive issues of the day for all of you distracted by all the fluff-gossip about a certain haughty, French-looking Massachusetts Democrat and an outspoken ketchup heiress . . . Fox News; EFL
NEW YORK — One of America’s most famous couples is calling it quits. Are you sitting down? After 43 years together, Barbie and Ken — as in the dolls — have decided that breaking up is hard to do, but do it they must. Since they’re dolls — and famous — Barbie and Ken had no comment about their split at the International Toy Fair, where the bombshell was dropped. The announcement predictably came from their spokespeople during a news conference Thursday. “This is an announcement we thought we’d never make,” said Barbie’s publicist, Ken Sunshine. “I will confirm that Ken and Barbie are going to go their separate ways.” Sunshine, who also represents Hollywood stars such as Ben Affleck and Justin Timberlake, said Barbie is looking forward to spending time in her Dream house, and asked the press to "Please, please respect their privacy."
Drudge is not yet reporting it, but there are rumors linking Ken to one of the Flavas.
The twosome’s relationship might be over, but their troubles aren’t, especially when it comes to the settlement. They’ll be faced with the task of divvying up the hundreds of possessions they’ve amassed over the years, such as the Barbie Bubble Bath, the Barbie Camper, the Barbie Townhouse and the Barbie Sun N Sand 4x4 vehicle.
On the other hand, maybe we’ll see Frontier Justice Barbie make an appearance.
Posted by: John Kerry || 02/12/2004 2:19:38 PM || Comments || Link || [336067 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Ken's finally coming out of the closet, eh?
Posted by: Robert Crawford || 02/12/2004 14:24 Comments || Top||

#2  Crackwhore Barbie, Gangsta Bitch Barbie, it was worse then Sybil. Ken probably couldn't take the multiple personalities. He's better off.
Posted by: tu3031 || 02/12/2004 14:29 Comments || Top||

#3  LOL tu you must have missed draft bait Ken... with his Go-To-Canada-Bag. It was a very limited edition...
Posted by: Shipman || 02/12/2004 16:19 Comments || Top||

#4  I think she finally went down on him and realized he's built just like her.........
Posted by: Jarhead || 02/12/2004 20:21 Comments || Top||


-Short Attention Span Theater-
When Binny croaks

I got this from an e-mail. I don’t know if it’s been seen before. Amusing, though.
After his death, Osama bin Laden went to paradise. He was greeted by George Washington, who slapped him across the face and yelled angrily, "How dare you attack the nation I helped conceive!" Then Patrick Henry punched Osama in the nose and James Madison kicked him in the groin. Bin Laden was subjected to similar beatings from John Randolph, James Monroe, Thomas Jefferson and 66 other early Americans. As he writhed in pain on the ground, an angel appeared. Bin Laden groaned, "This is not what I was promised!"

The angel replied, "I told you there would be 72 Virginians waiting for you! What did you think I said?"
Posted by: Korora || 02/12/2004 1:19:35 PM || Comments || Link || [336066 views] Top|| File under:

#1  And just wait till Generals Vandergrift & Puller get their mitts on him.
Posted by: Hiryu || 02/12/2004 14:11 Comments || Top||


Pluto Killed in Work Accident
A float ran over and killed a costumed Disney worker during a Magic Kingdom parade Wednesday, park officials and police said. Javier Cruz, 38, a father of two and an eight-year Disney veteran, was playing Pluto in the daily afternoon parade. "Javier was a Disney character even when he wasn’t working," said his sister, Wanda Marin, 36, of Orlando. "I used to call him a wingless angel." About 3:30 p.m. Wednesday, he was at work, in a backstage area near Frontierland about to enter the public area of the park when the accident was witnessed by a handful of his co-workers. "We think very few guests saw it, if any," said park spokesman Bill Warren. Disney released few details about the death Wednesday night, citing ongoing investigations by the Orange County Sheriff’s Office and the Occupational Safety & Health Administration. An Orange County Sheriff’s Office spokesman, Deputy Carlos Torres, said the death appeared to be accidental.
Survived by Donald, Daisy, Mickey, Minnie, many children and grandchildren. OTOH, the good news is that a 42 year old woman in France married him early this morning. Congrats to Pluto and his new bride!
Posted by: Chuck Simmins || 02/12/2004 11:44:38 AM || Comments || Link || [336074 views] Top|| File under:

#1  That'll teach him to chase cars, er, floats.
Posted by: Steve || 02/12/2004 11:49 Comments || Top||

#2  this story is not funny!
Posted by: muck4doo || 02/12/2004 11:51 Comments || Top||

#3  You right muck4doo there's gonna be a lot of unhappy kids when the news gets out, thank god it wasn't Goofy.
Posted by: Shipman || 02/12/2004 12:16 Comments || Top||

#4  this story is a not funny either!

Link

Posted by: muck4doo || 02/12/2004 12:33 Comments || Top||

#5  Oh, Eisner is a gonner. Even Congress will have to approve a merger w/ Comcast after this.
Posted by: rkb || 02/12/2004 12:37 Comments || Top||

#6  I'm worried about Mickey they were so close, does he have a therapist?
Posted by: Shipman || 02/12/2004 13:00 Comments || Top||

#7  Remeber Pluto sniffing flowers in that one cartoon? I'm devastated....bawaaah bawaaaah
Of course the French will be happy now since they won't see him "without" clothes on anymore. I guess Donald is next.
Posted by: dataman1 || 02/12/2004 13:55 Comments || Top||

#8  Parade floats...why do they hate us?
And our little dogs, too?
Posted by: tu3031 || 02/12/2004 14:31 Comments || Top||

#9  Poor Pluto. It wasn't his fault the float looked like a hydrant.
Posted by: Charles || 02/12/2004 16:53 Comments || Top||

#10  Pluto was an oppressed pup which is why he was so beloved by the Balestians, Goofy on the other hand learned to walk upright, speak English and give up his primative ways. Be careful Goofy.
Posted by: Shipman || 02/12/2004 17:22 Comments || Top||

#11  So much for the urban legend that claims Disney pays off the local law enforcement so no deaths are ever recorded as happening in the park.
Posted by: Robert Crawford || 02/12/2004 17:31 Comments || Top||

#12  "I'm sorry my karma ran over your dogma"
Posted by: eLarson || 02/12/2004 19:30 Comments || Top||


Britain
Briton key suspect in nuclear ring
He’s British, but lives in Dubai, Khan’s ring is in Pakistan, and the parts came from Malaysia. I didn’t know where to post this. Edited for details:
A Middle East-based British businessman has emerged as a key suspect in a secret network supplying Libya, Iran and North Korea with equipment to build nuclear bombs. Speaking for the first time yesterday, Paul Griffin denied that his company played any part in shipping prohibited material from the Far East. He told the Guardian: "We have been framed."
"Lies, all lies!"
The names of individuals and companies supposedly involved in Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan’s clandestine network - including that of Mr Griffin - have been leaking slowly into the public domain. The US authorities have named a Dubai-based Sri Lankan businessman, BSA Tahir, as a key middle man in the nuclear proliferation network. Mr Bush last night named Mr Tahir as Dr Khan’s deputy and said he ran SMB computers, a business in Dubai. "Tahir used that computer company as a front for the proliferation activities of the AQ Khan network. Tahir ... was also its shipping agent, using his computer firm as cover for the movement of centrifuge parts to various clients."
Tahir is a key player
The CIA director, George Tenet, last week named a Malaysian company, Scomi Precision Engineering, as the firm that manufactured 14 components for a nuclear centrifuge dispatched to Libya last year. The equipment was seized in a high-security operation in October when the container vessel carrying it, the German-owned BBC China, entered the Mediterranean. Intelligence agents persuaded the owners to divert the ship to the southern Italian port of Taranto, where the material was confiscated.
"Divert it, or we’ll do it for you"
Pleading that it thought the components were destined for the oil or gas industry, Scomi in turn named British-owned and Dubai-based Gulf Technical Industries (GTI) as the company which placed the order.
"We’re innocent, it’s their fault!"
GTI, which was established in 2000, is run by Mr Griffin and his father, Peter. Its registration form with the Dubai Chamber of Trade and Commerce describes it as trading in "pumps, engines, valves and spare parts". It is listed on another Middle East website as a steel trading company. "The allegations are totally untrue," Mr Griffin told the Guardian from Dubai. "We trade in engineering products. The first I knew about the press release [from Scomi] was when I was telephoned about it at 7.15am on Tuesday. I was asked whether we had really bought $3.5m of equipment from Malaysia."
"Huh?"
"It’s total nonsense, rubbish. I’m trying to find out myself what [is supposed to have been going on]. I have approached the Malaysian consulate to find out how everything happened. I haven’t bought anything from Malaysia at all.
Oh, really?
"If I was going to buy high precision parts I would order them from Europe; you know what you are getting from there. I would notice if I had brought some precision-engineered parts. They are not something you go pick up at a supermarket."
Sniff, sniff, say, did someone leave a dead fish here?
Mr Griffin, 40, and originally from south Wales, said he had met Mr Tahir when GTI bought some computers from his company last year. GTI had also asked him to sort out a computer virus on his system. "That was it," Mr Griffin said.
Hummm, so Tahir had access to GTI’s computers. Maybe more access than Mr. Griffin knows?
Asked whether he knew Dr Khan, the metallurgist, Mr Griffin said that he had, coincidentally, met him at a wedding in Pakistan "about 18 years ago". He added: "I went to a friend’s wedding and he [Khan] was the local dignitary. I was introduced to him.
A wedding, huh? Lots of meetings seem to take place at weddings by coincidence, too many in fact.
"I have never met him in Dubai or since then. I don’t even know where he lives. I haven’t had any [other] contact with him.
Sure, we believe you.
"If we were anything to do with [this smuggling], I would have thought British or US intelligence would have contacted me. The British embassy know me here. I haven’t been contacted by the authorities here. If I was doing something dodgy, I would have been picked up."
Give it time.
The bill of lading with the German company, BBC Chartering and Logistic, which owned the BBC China, would show he had nothing to do with the centrifuge order, he said. "They have promised to send me the documentation. They told me they had never heard of us. It’s all a mystery. The last time I saw Tahir was eight months ago. These allegations are all a load of bullshit."
Well, something here smells like bullshit.
Mr Griffin, who has lived in Dubai on and off since 1986, said his father, Peter, had now retired to Paris. GTI was still tendering for work with the oil industry in the region. GTI’s registered office is in a low-rise building at the side of the eight-lane Sheikh Zayed Highway on the way to the UAE capital, Abu Dhabi. Yesterday, the office smelled of paint and appeared to be in the process of being re-let. Mr Griffin lives in a single-storey villa in the smart Jumeirah area of the city, surrounded by palm trees. He told the Guardian his company had moved premises.
That’s ok, we’ll know where to find you.
Malaysian security authorities said they did not know the whereabouts of Mr Tahir, who allegedly ordered the centrifuge parts from Scomi Precision Engineering, which is controlled by the son of Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi.
What a surprise.
A police spokesman said investigators were keen to speak to him. "He is a crucial part of our ongoing investigation so we are keen to talk to him but we have yet to locate him," the spokesman said.
I hope we have him. If the Malaysians find him first, I’ll bet he is never found.
Mr Bush said that Mr Tahir, who has a Malaysian wife, "is in Malaysia, where authorities are investigating his activities". Western diplomatic sources in Kuala Lumpur say they would like to see the investigation intensified but in reality it is losing momentum because Scomi has been cleared of any wrongdoing by Malaysian police. A police spokesman said: "Our investigation is still ongoing and we want to get to the bottom of the matter."
Looking for witnesses to disappear.
The Malaysian police chief, Mohd Bakri Omar, on Sunday absolved Scomi of any participation in the nuclear weapons trade. "So far, no wrongdoing has been committed," he said.
"Nothing to see, move along."
BBC Chartering and Logistic GmbH, the shipping company based at Leer in northern Germany which owns the BBC China, said: "This was a regular container transport from Dubai to Libya. We were surprised by the visits from the secret service and the [German] economics ministry. We’re not involved at all in this story." Investigation sources say the shipping company has been cleared of any suspicion in the incident and the BBC China is plying its business as usual.
While the IAEA investigators were denied access to the material on the BBC China by the Americans, the agency’s inspectors found similar equipment in Libya during a visit in December. According to diplomats in Vienna, the equipment bore stickers bearing the name KRL, referring to Khan Research Laboratories, the facility south of Islamabad at the heart of the Pakistani bomb project and named after Dr Khan.
That’s even better than the plastic bag from a Pak dry cleaner wrapping the nuke plans.
The stickers found on the equipment in Libya explain why Dr Mohammed ElBaradei, the IAEA head, has taken to describing the clandestine nuclear trade as a "supermarket."
Khan’s Market, We deliver!
Posted by: Steve || 02/12/2004 11:05:00 AM || Comments || Link || [336096 views] Top|| File under:

#1  While the IAEA investigators were denied access to the material on the BBC China by the Americans, the agency’s inspectors found similar equipment in Libya during a visit in December. According to diplomats in Vienna, the equipment bore stickers bearing the name KRL Interesting analysis which suggests the Americans and the IAEA don't exactly share information. Wonder if we would have found out about the stickers and Kahn without the independant US investigation. Is IAEA complicit in this proliferation?
Posted by: john || 02/12/2004 21:46 Comments || Top||


British Airways Cancels 2 Flights, Again
A much-disrupted British Airways flight from London to Washington, D.C. has been canceled again over security fears, the airline said Thursday. British Airways said Flight 223 from Heathrow to Washington’s Dulles Airport would not fly on the coming Sunday. Monday’s Flight 263 from London to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia also was scrapped.
Flight 223 again. I read a rumor somewhere that the number 223 was related to a UN resolution about Israel. Does anyone have any info about that?
The airline said the decision "follows government advice to cancel those flights for security reasons." The 184 people booked on the Washington flight and 149 Riyadh passengers would be rebooked on other flights or given a refund, the airline said. BA said the return flights to London would operate as scheduled. Flight 223 has been delayed or canceled eight previous times this year because of U.S. security alerts. Saudi flights also have been canceled several times. Officials in Britain have refused to say what intelligence prompted them to advise cancellation of the BA flights, but U.S. authorities have spoken of a "specific and credible" terrorist threat to international flights.
Somebody is hearing something they are worried about.
Posted by: Steve || 02/12/2004 9:36:11 AM || Comments || Link || [336064 views] Top|| File under:

#1  There was something about UN Rez 223 in al-Guardian that I saw. The resolution, like most of UN resolutions, attacks Israel.
Posted by: AllahHateMe || 02/12/2004 9:39 Comments || Top||

#2  Here's what it said in the Guardian:

Precisely why BA223 to Washington is being targeted is a mystery. The persistent warnings suggest that some conversation between al-Qaida supporters has been overheard, or a message intercepted. One theory in aviation circles was that the threat to flight BA223 might relate to UN general assembly resolution 223 passed in 1997, which attacked the Israeli treatment of Palestinians on the occupied territories. The resolution, which is among several UN declarations regularly cited by Arab states, condemned Jewish settlements on the West Bank and the Gaza strip as "illegal" and "a major obstacle to peace".
Posted by: growler || 02/12/2004 9:53 Comments || Top||

#3  That's the one, thanks.
Posted by: Steve || 02/12/2004 9:59 Comments || Top||

#4  223? Is that really how their minds work? If this is true, these guys are as looney as Louis Farakhan.
Posted by: whitecollar redneck || 02/12/2004 10:03 Comments || Top||

#5  Now that we have BA223/UN223 settled. Can someone tell me why BA also cancels flight 263 to Riyadh at the same time as the 223 cancellations? (UNGA Resolution 56/263 has to do with diamonds funding conflicts.)
Posted by: GA || 02/12/2004 10:07 Comments || Top||

#6  that post was by GK not GA. sorry.
Posted by: GK || 02/12/2004 10:11 Comments || Top||

#7  March 13, 1997
The General Assembly,

Having considered the letters dated 21, 1/ 25 2/ and 27 3/ February 1997 from the Permanent Observer of Palestine on behalf of the States members of the League of Arab States,

Expressing deep concern at the decision of the Government of Israel to initiate new settlement activities in the Jebel Abu Ghneim area in East Jerusalem,

Expressing concern about other recent measures that encourage or facilitate new settlement activities,

Stressing that such settlements are illegal and a major obstacle to peace,

Recalling its resolutions on Jerusalem and other relevant General Assembly and Security Council resolutions,

Confirming that all legislative and administrative measures and actions taken by Israel which purport to alter the status of Jerusalem, including expropriation of land and properties thereon, are invalid and cannot change that status,

Reaffirming its support for the Middle East peace process and all its achievements, including the recent agreement on Hebron,

Concerned about the difficulties facing the Middle East peace process, including the impact these have on the living conditions of the Palestinian people, and urging the parties to fulfil their obligations, including under the agreements already reached,

Having discussed the situation at its 91st, 92nd and 93rd plenary meetings on 12 and 13 March 1997,

Calls upon the Israeli authorities to refrain from all actions or measures, including settlement activities, which alter the facts on the ground, pre-empting the final status negotiations, and have negative implications for the Middle East peace process;

Calls upon Israel, the occupying Power, to abide scrupulously by its legal obligations and responsibilities under the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War of 12 August 1949, 4/ which is applicable to all the territories occupied by Israel since 1967;

Calls upon all parties to continue, in the interests of peace and security, their negotiations within the Middle East peace process on its agreed basis and the timely implementation of the agreements reached;

Requests the Secretary-General to bring to the attention of the Government of Israel the provisions of the present resolution.
93rd plenary meeting
13 March 1997


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Notes
Posted by: Slumming || 02/12/2004 12:30 Comments || Top||

#8  Why doesn't BA just change the flight # and time of departure?

I thought they found the guy they were looking for????? That was still odd, tho.
Posted by: Anonymous2U || 02/12/2004 15:45 Comments || Top||

#9  Why doesn't BA just change the flight # and time of departure?
That would mean the terrorists' have won.
Posted by: Shipman || 02/12/2004 16:22 Comments || Top||


China-Japan-Koreas
U.S. Likely to Launch China Resolution
The United States will likely call for international criticism of China’s human rights record at the upcoming meeting of the United Nations’ top human rights body, a senior U.S. official said Wednesday. The Bush administration is moving toward introducing a resolution at the U.N. Human Rights Commission condemning China because last year "it was radio silence from Beijing" over human rights concerns, the official said. At the 2003 session, the United States decided not to introduce a China resolution because Beijing took some significant steps on human rights in 2002. Washington is now concerned that more Chinese are being arrested, lawyers trying to defend clients are ending up in jail, and only two prominent prisoners were released in 2003. China’s human rights record was the subject of a lengthy discussion at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on Jan. 29. According to a transcript, Lorne Craner, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor, raised the possibility of introducing a resolution criticizing China.
After which the Endowment members went to a long lunch.
In the past, China has blocked U.S. attempts to get the 53-member Human Rights Commission to pass critical resolutions. The U.S. official said Beijing would likely try to thwart any resolution introduced this year, but it wouldn’t matter because Washington’s aim is simply to raise the issues.
Does that constitute a moral victory of sorts?
Why start a new fight when you're busy with another one? Or is this pressure with regard to Korea?
Posted by: Steve White || 02/12/2004 1:10:56 AM || Comments || Link || [336069 views] Top|| File under:

#1  I can't believe CEIP is wasting its breath attacking someone other than the Bush Administration. Protesting the abuses of a one-party dictatorship?! What kind of lefties are these??!!
Posted by: Tokyo Taro || 02/12/2004 5:45 Comments || Top||

#2  Yes, I'd bet Korea and maybe also currency values as a side dish.
Posted by: rkb || 02/12/2004 14:13 Comments || Top||

#3  It'll never make LEO.
Posted by: Shipman || 02/12/2004 17:25 Comments || Top||


Europe
Mosque urged Brigitte to take jihad action
Brigitte, who was deported from Australia in October, told French investigators Jihad played a central role in the mosque he and fellow worshippers attended on the outskirts of Paris. French investigative judge Jean Louis Bruguiere questioned Brigitte about extremist Islamic views preached at the Omar and Abu Bakar mosques in suburban Couronne. "Yes, that is true, in the teachings given there by Mohamed El Magrebi, the Jihad played a major part," Brigitte responded, according to a transcript of his interview aired on ABC’s Four Corners last night. Brigitte said many of his fellow worshippers were subsequently killed in the war on terror. "Moreover all those who took part in this teaching have either died in Afghanistan or have been arrested by the Americans because they have been led to that country," Brigitte claimed.
That says we're doing great things, right there...
Brigitte and a Sydney associate, Abu Hamza, are being investigated for an alleged plot against one of several Sydney-based defence bases. Hamza, who has been interviewed by ASIO, allegedly used false company names to make initial inquiries about buying ammonium nitrate fertiliser and other chemicals within Australia, possibly for use in a bomb. Those inquiries may have tipped off the investigation into Hamza, Fertiliser Industry Federation of Australia executive manager Nick Drew said. Mr Drew said fertiliser suppliers had alerted authorities to at least 10 suspicious purchase inquiries in the past 15 months, following overseas attacks where ammonium nitrate was used as an explosive. "We pass these on to the AFP (Australian Federal Police) routinely but as to whether this specific case was picked up in this way, I don’t know," he said. It is understood ASIO questioned Hamza and was unconvinced of his claim that he wanted to send ammonium nitrate to his family’s overseas tanning business.

Brigitte, the son of an engineer and pharmacist, converted to Islam in 1998. In the interview, Brigitte said he joined the navy before 1998 but went AWOL. After the navy, Brigitte said he’d worked in a drug rehabilitation centre and as a social worker before running a butcher’s shop. Brigitte said his conversion to Islam and his adoption of the Muslim name Mohammed Abderrahmane was the result of "personal reasoning". "It was through studying the Koran and after reading the Bible, the Old and New Testament, that I decided to join Islam," he said. The French secret service has since linked Brigitte to the Algerian based terrorist group, Salafist Group for Call and Combat and Lashkar-e-Taiba.
Posted by: TS || 02/12/2004 10:39:18 AM || Comments || Link || [336066 views] Top|| File under:

#1 
many of his fellow worshippers were subsequently killed in the war on terror.

Praise be to Allah!
Posted by: Mike Sylwester || 02/12/2004 18:17 Comments || Top||


I hope this isn’t a reflection of the entire country!
Not an article. I visit The Independent’s forum to hone my debating skills and learn. (Boy you guys want to have some fun, you should check it out. MAJOR anti-americanism)
From a thread on banning the scarf, in response to a question if we’ve kissed and made up (between 2 other people):
No, i’m on a diet and in any case we call them fritte’s here......

In answer to your question, as far as the French are concerned there was never any animosity toward the U.K. or the U.S. Our elected government simply voiced its opposition to the incursion of Irak’s territory on the grounds of some spurious nonsense.

Suddenly, there were inflammatory articles in the press about how we had forgotten the aid that they had given us in the last war, which was very hurtful because one of the motivating forces against the French getting involved in France was, that as a country who had long suffered under occupation by foreign forces: we, above all recognise Fascism when we see it.

Then everybody stopped buying our wine and cheese etc. etc. blah blah blah; but the upshot of it all is, that our daily lives here are not influenced by the goings on across the Channel or the Atlantic. We love the British and the Americans.We won’t tell you to bugger off when you come on your hols. If the Americans can forgive the Japanese for Pearl harbour and we can forgive the Germans,surely we can be forgiven for not getting involved with a dirty and ignominious war.

Finally, Whatever the reasons Blair and Bush are giving to justify there stay in a country which manifestly does not want their presence or, whatever justifcation the G.I’s have for their failure to familiarise themselves with the language and customs of Irak: I suspect that the anti-French campaign was deliberately orchestrated to generate an anti-European feeling ,because the thought of a strong Europe scares the s**t out of the yanks.


I responded:

--Our elected government simply voiced its opposition to the incursion of Irak’s territory on the grounds of some spurious nonsense.--
Umm, Babavee, I’m assuming, since you’re here, you know about the internet and translation programs??

Also sites like this who do our work for us.

Some pretty vile "cartoons" our "ally" puts out via its mouthpieces considering it’s a heavy fine for making fun of the president of same country.

http://merdeinfrance.blogspot.com/

Oh, and here’s a hint, our response was not perpetrated by our government, it was perpetrated by yours.

--surely we can be forgiven for not getting involved with a dirty and ignominious war.--

Keep dreaming. You have failed to realize you have alienated a good portion of the Millenials. Future tourists.

So, to make up, maybe you could pay back what you still owe us for the Marshall Debt??? I don’t think you’ve made a payment since the 60s.
--

And the Pali/Israel threads, man.
Posted by: Anonymous2U || 02/12/2004 12:30:48 AM || Comments || Link || [336072 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Preety cool A2, I could almost taste the smoke and smell the boujalais.

"Then everybody stoped buying our wine and cheese..." thats hillarious.
Posted by: Lucky || 02/12/2004 1:20 Comments || Top||

#2  No boycott was orcestrated by anyone in the government. It was all done by the peasant American tourists and consumers. WE stopped buying French wines, and stopped visiting Paris. No force in the universe can stop us from not coming.
Posted by: Ben || 02/12/2004 4:37 Comments || Top||

#3  Unfortunately for a large number of idiotarians in the world, the Internet has totally blasted away walls that used to separate us and allow those that hate us to hide behind their borders. Today, anything anyone says, anywhere in the world, can go from a local rant to worldwide common knowledge in a matter of hours. That certainly makes it far more difficult to lie about the role of government, whatever it might be, wherever it might play. And that's a good thing.
Posted by: Old Patriot || 02/12/2004 11:40 Comments || Top||

#4  You guys are way off the mark. The French don't have anything against the Yanks; they live in a country that has 6m Arab immigrants for 65m population. The last thing they want is an all out Jihad at home, that’s understandable they tried that in the 90s with the Algerian terrorists before Al Qaeda was an issue. They are not happy because no WMD have been found and they said in the beginning let the inspectors do their job instead of attacking an Arab country that doesn't pose a threat, and starting a really dirty terrorist campaign. They are also very unhappy because America is 500 billion in debt mostly because of Iraq (I make the difference between the war on Terror and Iraq), the international banks won't lend America money anymore, so the dollar falls bringing the world economy with it. That might not be totally true but its all perception isn't it? They are sympathetic about US troops on the ground getting hammered because the troops are not trained to deal with this kind of war when its strategically unfocused by the policy makers (that’s taken from Bounding the Global War on Terrorism written by Jeffrey Record who is a professor in the Department of Strategy and International Security at the US Air Force’s Air War College in Montgomery, Alabama, it's a good read you can find it on the net). If more than 10% of the American population had passports and travelled around the world more you might learn a thing or two about how other peasants think, instead of believing everything you see on CNN. Oh by the way, "spurious" is in the dictionary it means fake, phoney, counterfeit, sham depending on how you use it, quite in context I thought...just depends where you get your facts. I'm no lefty believe me, but on this one you guys are way off the mark.
Posted by: Bob || 02/12/2004 13:11 Comments || Top||

#5  Well, if the French "know fascism when they see it", they sure weren't loathe to do business with it. Or, in the case of some officials, to take thinly-disguised oil bribes to keep it in power.

Many french people are anti-american and have been, with varying degrees of unbelievable condescension, for years. I found that out first hand while travelling ... on a US passport ... in Europe and also while doing business there.

Record's article is one point of view. It doesn't reflect the views of the Air War College faculty as a whole, by any means.

Oh, and Bob - do try to inform yourself a bit better. It really is the case that many Americans speak more than one language, travel and *still* don't agree with you.
Posted by: rkb || 02/12/2004 14:20 Comments || Top||

#6  So, to make up, maybe you could pay back what you still owe us for the Marshall Debt??? I don’t think you’ve made a payment since the 60s.

Why haven't we held this over their heads? We can ram it down they're throats! Wait, maybe Bush will do that on the D-day ceromony?
Posted by: Charles || 02/12/2004 16:58 Comments || Top||

#7  The Marshall Debt issue reminds me....
To help eliminate our rather large debt from the war, could we not demand that the rest of the world pay us back what we have lent to them over the years to keep their counrties from disintegrating? I believe that we have lent the rest of the world a lot of money, and in places where we have not directly given money, we have not asked for payment of other things. So, why don't they just pay us back? I'm sure it would help us and would probably eventually even help those countries who pay us back.
Posted by: S || 02/12/2004 18:11 Comments || Top||

#8  Oh, Bob, I'm one of the 10% who DO have a passport. And I've used it. More than once. What you (and they) fail to realize is that we can now surf over there and throw articles into a translation program.

And the beauzeau's response was better, as of last week, he doesn't care because he retired from the human race.

And Bob, have you ever heard of the site "Merdeinfrance.blogspot.com?"

You'll be overwhelmed by the sympathy our "ally" shows us.

Some especially charming "cartoons" from LeMonde and the others, also. Just pouring out sympathy - well, oil anyway since it IS about oil, you know.
Posted by: Anonymous2U || 02/12/2004 21:21 Comments || Top||


Fifth Column
Everything you need to know about George Soros
Is it me, or is he the embodiment of everything the left claims to oppose? He’s the literal embodiment of an amoral business type who uses his cash to influence the politics of nations he doesn’t like. .com had a really great bit on him when Shevardnadze fell.
IN many James Bond films, 007 must battle some megalomaniac tycoon who plots to dominate the world by toppling governments and triggering wars. It’s always some nasty Right-winger, of course. In Tomorrow Never Dies, for instance, the filmmakers thought it would be a hoot to cast my boss, Rupert Murdoch, in the black hat.

How the Leftists who dominate Hollywood must have sniggered at the slur. How odd, then, to find those same Hollywood liberals this week cosying up to the very billionaire who most resembles that Bond villain – currency speculator George Soros, fresh from toppling his latest president, this time in Georgia. And how predictable – to those with an eye for history – to find that Soros is no Right-winger, but a preacher of the New Age Left.

You may remember Soros as the American financier who, in 1992, bet $20 billion that the British pound would fall, and made a $1.5 billion profit in one day. Or you may remember how he made another fortune when Asia’s financial markets crashed in 1997 – a disaster that Malaysia’s then leader, Dr Mahathir Mohamad, accused Soros of having caused for cash. Some Australians have a sweeter reason to remember Soros. Top drug experts such as Melbourne’s Dr Nick Crofts and Sydney’s Dr Alex Wodak have received grants from his Lindesmith Foundation, which aggressively promotes their brand of "harm minimisation". Soros’s Open Society Institute also organised a petition to the United Nations demanding an end to the "war on drugs", and had it signed here by Victorian Treasurer John Brumby, drug adviser Professor David Penington, High Court judge Michael Kirby and a gabble of our politicians.

OF course, Australia is only one of 50 countries in which Soros works. And his meddling here is nothing given what he’s just done in Georgia. Georgia has long been led by President Eduard Shevardnadze, the former Soviet Union’s foreign minister under Mikhail Gorbachev. Soros, who spends $1 billion a year to promote his vision of the "Open Society", was a Shevardnadze supporter, but fell out with him, calling him a crook. He then backed Georgia’s former justice minister, Mikhail Saakashvili, and spent some $4 million on a protest movement against the president. His organisations brought in experts in "non-violent revolution" from Serbia, gave $700,000 to an activist group that bussed in protesters, and financed an anti-government TV station and newspaper. It worked. Last month, protesters smashed into Georgia’s parliament, yelling – probably correctly – that Shevardnadze had stolen the elections a month ago and must quit. Shevardnadze fled, and Saakashvili looks set for leadership. True, this may turn out to be a victory for democracy. But it also looks like a victory for a foreign tycoon and his sponsored mates. Indeed, the editor-in-chief of the Georgian Messenger newspaper this week said: "It’s generally accepted public opinion here that Mr Soros is the person who planned the Shevardnadze overthrow." Shevardnadze says he’s certain of it.

NOR is this the first time Soros undermined a foreign government. From 1991, he spent up to $100 million on activists campaigning against the president of Serbian-dominated Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milosevic. He was also a huge donor to Human Rights Watch, and with six of his associates sat on its advisory committee on Europe. In the early 1990s, the Kosovo Liberation Army began killing officials in the Yugoslav province of Kosovo. Its tactic was brutally simple: to provoke Serbian troops into retaliating so violently that the horrified West would intervene to give Kosovo independence. It worked – not least because the HRW condemned Serbia’s reprisals so noisily that it boasted it had helped to inspire NATO’s bombing of Serbia. After NATO’s "victory", Soros gave money to the United Nations’ new International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, and paid for training for its judges and prosecutor. He also paid two American law faculties to help the prosecutor find evidence against Serbia’s suspected war criminals – and Milosevic.

Yes, Milosevic is repulsive. But is it healthy for a billionaire like Soros to be so involved in triggering a war, creating a court and then helping to prosecute in it the leaders of the regime he’s worked so hard to topple? Who elected him? Who holds him accountable? And now, of course, we’ve signed up to the International Criminal Court that Soros spent millions lobbying for – a court which, under its rules, must consult groups of the kind Soros himself funds.

So far, you may argue, Soros has acted against only thugs and tyrants. But now he’s moving against the leader of the world’s greatest democracy, US President George W. Bush. Last month, Soros declared that "America, under Bush, is a danger to the world", and defeating the president was now "the central focus of my life". He said he would give $13 million – the largest individual political donation in US history – to America Coming Together, a far-Left group of pro-Democrat activists, and up to $4 million for a Left-wing think tank. Another $6 million would go to the radical MoveOn.org protest group. "I’ve come to the conclusion that one can do a lot more about the issues I care about by changing the Government than by pushing the issues," Soros said.

Soros could say that without fussing many journalists because which of them fears the Left? Imagine the uproar if Rupert Murdoch had said it instead. Still, I can understand why Soros isn’t content with simply "pushing the issues", given what happened when one of his companies in 1986 bought Spectrum 7, an oil outfit owned by George Bush, whose father was the then US Vice-President. "We were buying political influence," Soros said bluntly. Sadly, the Bushes didn’t play ball with that bit of issue pushing, and "it didn’t come to anything".

But this new tack already seems to be buying results. Just this week, the wife of Larry David, creator of Seinfeld, invited Hollywood’s elite to a "Hate Bush" event for the Soros-sponsored Americans Coming Together (and never mind that mixed message). And here we see the newest threats to democratic government in this globalised world – of celebrity activists, unaccountable "rights" groups and messianic tycoons from Soros to Ted Turner, all so terribly sure of their virtue. Mix them up and who knows what the explosion will do. It could destroy a tyranny, or distort a democracy. There’s no predicting which, because the targets are as idiosyncratic as the whims of George Soros, a man with far more dollars than sense, and fewer restraints than either.
Posted by: Dan Darling || 02/12/2004 1:24:45 AM || Comments || Link || [336076 views] Top|| File under:

#1  I always want to know what kind of car a guy like Soros drives. Not what he is driven in, what he drives. I'd like to see what the celebrities drove to the "hate Bush" thing. What a farce.
Posted by: Lucky || 02/12/2004 1:54 Comments || Top||

#2  Dan Darling as usual has his head up his Freeper ass--complaining about a billionaire tycoon when he's admitted he works for Rupert Murdoch--the foreigner from Australia who has done more to "dumb down" political discourse and television in general in the USA than anyone in history is just beyond any rational being to countenance! I really wonder how asshats like that sleep at night
Posted by: NotMike Moore || 02/12/2004 1:58 Comments || Top||

#3  NMM, if I'm writing for a paper like the Herald Sun, believe me when I said that I'd be making quite a bit more than I do now as a college student.

I'm still trying to figure out what my being a FReeper has anything to do with what it is that I post. It's not like I'm plugging FR at every opportunity and my views are on a number of issues, in actuality, a lot similar to those of liberalhawk than some of the other folks around here.

But by all means, believe as you will ...
Posted by: Dan Darling || 02/12/2004 2:02 Comments || Top||

#4  If you are truly a college student then your ignorance is truly appalling--I would have bet you were a 50 year old angry white male LOL
You admitted to being a Freeper--the people who totally fuck up internet polls and pull childish pranks
Posted by: NotMike Moore || 02/12/2004 2:09 Comments || Top||

#5  Oh, and by the way dumbass--you didn't address the issue of you working for that Australian Scumbag
Posted by: NotMike Moore || 02/12/2004 2:11 Comments || Top||

#6  I would suggest you register your sorry ass as a foreign agent but oops--forgot that Gingrich got him US citizenship and also allowed him to expand his network
Posted by: NotMike Moore || 02/12/2004 2:13 Comments || Top||

#7  He sleeps very well, wasn't profit up 51%?
Posted by: Anonymous2U || 02/12/2004 2:15 Comments || Top||

#8  up 51% on what--what's your source moron?
Posted by: NotMike Moore || 02/12/2004 2:18 Comments || Top||

#9  Ho ho!, NMM and DD off to a flying start.

As for Soros, I don't get how a billionaire can be left wing. I mean, he makes a load of money, he invests that money, he sees that money create jobs and wealth - with all that leads to such as Science and culture. This is how capitalism works its magic. Therefore I can't see how this fits in with a leftist 'equality in outcome'. 'the state is your friend', 'root causes', 'kumbaya' mindset.

I have to go to work now, but I'll check back in later to see how it's all panning out.
Posted by: Tony (UK) || 02/12/2004 2:19 Comments || Top||

#10  LMAO, NMM is very uppity tonight!
Posted by: Damn_Proud_American || 02/12/2004 2:20 Comments || Top||

#11  Andrew Bolt is arguably the best political columnist in Australia. I like his columns a lot.

As for Murdoch 'dumbing down' the US, this is just a variant on the Left's 'If you disagree with us then you must be stupid' psuedo-argument that is extremely tiresome.

I'm a bona fide intellectual, and I quite like Fox news. Much better than the excruciating CNN. The BBC excepting its often excellent documentaries, is not much better.
Posted by: phil_b || 02/12/2004 2:21 Comments || Top||

#12  As if phil_b you prolly like the Springer Show even more
Posted by: NotMike Moore || 02/12/2004 2:25 Comments || Top||

#13  I don't get how a billionaire can be left wing.

Its the Left dirty secret. Rich people are disproportionately Left wing. Especially those who didn't earn their money. Check out political donations by income data for the USA and Australia. Whereas working middle class people are disproportionately Right wing.
Posted by: phil_b || 02/12/2004 2:26 Comments || Top||

#14  PS Phil--for anyone with half a fucking brain it's called Faux News
Posted by: NotMike Moore || 02/12/2004 2:26 Comments || Top||

#15  Tony(UK): Soros is a self-hating capitalist in the same way he's a self-hating Jew.
Posted by: someone || 02/12/2004 2:29 Comments || Top||

#16  I do! I like reality TV in general. I also read books on all manner of subjects and I happen to be a published author.
Posted by: phil_b || 02/12/2004 2:30 Comments || Top||

#17  NMM, as I recall, Murdoch has taken out US citizenship

phil_b re 'is just a variant on the Left's 'If you disagree with us then you must be stupid''
yes, it is an argument often used by the left, it is also an argument often used by the right
Posted by: Igs || 02/12/2004 2:30 Comments || Top||

#18  Woo-hoo I knew you'd get on the Jews sooner or later--since they overwhelmingly support the Democrats
Posted by: NotMike Moore || 02/12/2004 2:32 Comments || Top||

#19  but those with complete brains call it Fox.....
Posted by: Atomic Conspiracy || 02/12/2004 2:33 Comments || Top||

#20  phil_b, political donations by income is not exactly a good way of analysing the trend, while you may be correct, it is an oversimplification, you will also find that people on higher incomes will use other vehicles to make donations (such as companies, trusts etc)
Posted by: Igs || 02/12/2004 2:33 Comments || Top||

#21  As a citizenship of convenience that Newtie passed a special law for--that old ass is too busy fucking his 32 yo wife and laughing at morons that support his billionaire lifestyle
Posted by: NotMike Moore || 02/12/2004 2:34 Comments || Top||

#22  Dean's finished. Weasley's finished. Surprise! NMM's on a bender. Inability to focus, irrelevance, trite spew repetition, and vile personal attacks are the hallmarks of his posts.

The topic is Soros. He has pledged to "do everything in my power to make certain George W Bush is not re-elected." That suffices, in my book, as worthy of serious attention.

Yet here we are wading through NMM's regurgitated bile in the form of personal attacks on DD, who is one hell of a contributor and highly valued here. Fuck this noise.

NMM. Sigh. You're an overgrown child with no socially or intellectually redeeming values, not to mention your obvious lack of proper toilet training. Look, you've shit all over yourself, again.


Fred - NMM's personal attacks and pointless posts have become a distraction and have no value. I request that you log and ban his gutless ass. Henceforth and for-fucking-ever.
Posted by: .com || 02/12/2004 2:35 Comments || Top||

#23  And I bet he saved more in taxes under the GOP tax cut than we both paid last year--tax cut for the rich....it's a GOP thang
Posted by: NotMike Moore || 02/12/2004 2:36 Comments || Top||

#24  .com--as usual you're personal attacks are pathetic and childish--for once in your sorry ass posts address an argument or contribute something
Posted by: NotMike Moore || 02/12/2004 2:38 Comments || Top||

#25  What a waste of time.
Posted by: .com || 02/12/2004 2:48 Comments || Top||

#26  You sure are .com--nothing to contribute but personal animosity--you must have a very sad life
Posted by: NotMike Moore || 02/12/2004 2:51 Comments || Top||

#27  I think the world really needs a nefarious, sinister, conspiratorial, manipulative, preternaturally intelligent billionaire.
I volunteer, but someone will have to donate the billion. What are Sam Walton's heirs up to these days?
Posted by: Atomic Conspiracy || 02/12/2004 2:57 Comments || Top||

#28  A little Googling gave me me this link -

'Among very wealthy donors, Democrats reigned supreme. Contributors of $1 million or more gave 92 percent of their money to Democrats, and 8 percent to the GOP.'
Posted by: phil_b || 02/12/2004 3:11 Comments || Top||

#29  It seems that NMM mistook the author's (Bolt's) disclosure about working for Murdoch to mean that the poster, Dan Darling, works for News Corp. Unless Dan does too. Am I missing something or is NMM being a fool?

But NMM has a point. I hate Soros too, but there is something deeply hypocritical about a News Corp. employee decrying the undue political influence of a billionaire. His little disclosure doesn't change that fact. Furthermore, Soros's influence in the Balkans and the Caucus, appears to be generally positive! Aiding pro-Democracy movements in Eastern Europe strikes me as a good deed, even if the history of high-stakes influence peddling is unsavory. Helping anti-Milosevic movements is hardly nefarious and the article becomes totally muddled by complaining about all of these deeds, while simultaneously conceding that Milosevic and Scheverdnadze probably needed to be deposed. The author sounds like one of those anti-War types admitting that "yes, Saddam was a monster, but..."

Soros's unforgivable blind spot is the Middle East (and also a lefty weakness for favoring transnational institutions). Apparently, he doesn't care about promoting his "Open Society" in lands where Islamic extremism and Arab nationalism reign supreme. I read his recent essay in the Atlantic Monthly which is a synopsis of his forthcoming book, "The Bubble of American Supremacy." I wanted to post the article here for fisking but it was like 10 pages and every sentence so full of &*%t that I couldn't even bother to ridicule it.

Psycho-analyzing Soros is tempting. I don't buy that "self-hating" stuff. He could be going senile as a result of age and the isolation from everyday life that all billionaires no doubt experience may have destroyed his common sense. He's still living in Sept. 10th world where Kofi Annan could have saved us from al-Qaida and negotiated a fair deal with the Taliban.

I suspect that he suffers from "Liberation Envy." With a billionaire's inflated ego, he probably believes that it is he himself alone who has saved and spread Democracy in Eastern Europe. He believes that his non-violent model is the only model and is ideologically blinded to the role of war in establishing tyranny and fighting tyranny, be it in his native Hungary or Serbia or Iraq.
Posted by: Tokyo Taro || 02/12/2004 3:38 Comments || Top||

#30  The Economist has a review of his new book,
"The Bubble of American Supremacy: Correcting the Misuse of American Power
By George Soros"
A two word review "get real"
Posted by: tipper || 02/12/2004 3:48 Comments || Top||

#31  NMM is a F*cking Idiot,will always be a F*cking Idiot.I don't know why you guys argue with the F*cking Idiot.

p.s sorry for the swearing
Posted by: djohn66 || 02/12/2004 4:36 Comments || Top||

#32  djohn66: Perhaps its like training, dealing with someone like NMM is a great way to cut one's teeth on liberal "arguments" Besides, encouraging him to post just displays badly on NMM and his side of the "argument."

I have ot use quotes when referring to NMM's arguments because as you have noted, there ain't none. Its just childish name calling. Which helps his opposition to no end.
Posted by: Ben || 02/12/2004 4:58 Comments || Top||

#33  NMM is not good debate training. You could find better Lefty debaters pretty easily.

I don't consider myself to be a very good right-wing hawk debater. But some people are just incoherent. I sometimes get frustrated with the quality on my own side of the debate, although Rantburgers are generally top-notch.
Posted by: Tokyo Taro || 02/12/2004 5:42 Comments || Top||

#34  Oh, and by the way dumbass--you didn't address the issue of you working for that Australian Scumbag

Um, NMM you idiot, that's not an issue. That's an ad hominem attack, irrelevent to the issue presented.

Not that I expect you to be able to tell the difference; you appear to be as bright as a burnt out bulb.
Posted by: Robert Crawford || 02/12/2004 7:05 Comments || Top||

#35  Ignore Mike Moore. Before NMM hijacked this discussion, the issue of George Soros hijacking elections was on the table. Andrew Bolt's (not Dan Darling's) Herald Sun column concluded that that Soros, or Soreass, is an unpredictable man with far more dollars than sense, and fewer restraints than either. Obviously his money can have an impact on the 2004 elections. Question is how to counteract his maniacal influence.

Posted by: GK || 02/12/2004 7:41 Comments || Top||

#36  Good heavens our ex-house troll seems to be imploding.
Posted by: Shipman || 02/12/2004 7:46 Comments || Top||

#37  Hey, NMM, I have a $20 bet on the line which should be a slam dunk for a real smart guy like you.

$20 ...for Fred's tip jar.
Posted by: B || 02/12/2004 7:52 Comments || Top||

#38  sigh..I'm just sitting here...clicking the refresh button ...hoping someone will give me a quote. It's starting to ruin my day.

By the way, GK - I think the way to bring Soros down would be to capitalize on his arrogance and sense of invincibility. While I'm not sure how to do that in his case, that's what always brings his type down.
Posted by: B || 02/12/2004 8:05 Comments || Top||

#39  Wow, I must have missed some really bad news for the Demos. NMM is even less coherent than usual! What happened NMM? Your momma not let you rub your little chubby on her last night? Fucking waste of human flesh. FOAD
Posted by: AllahHateMe || 02/12/2004 8:48 Comments || Top||

#40  Tokyo, I'm not so sure it's accurate to call Soros' activities in central Europe and elsewhere "non violent".

More accurately, he foments violence through 3rd parties. He also plays the currency & other markets and, given his history of shorting currencies, does best when there is chaos in the world.

So he gets to have it both ways: he creates chaos to profit from, but isn't held accountable in any way for what he does.
Posted by: anon || 02/12/2004 9:01 Comments || Top||

#41  Just to clarify (though I doubt that it's necessary), I don't work for Rupert Murdoch.
Posted by: Dan Darling || 02/12/2004 9:05 Comments || Top||

#42  If Soros had a cat we could call him Ernst Blofeld.

The thing that concerns me is he is so open about his plans and he isn't even a citizen (other than of the world I suppose). Is it hyperbole or does he really think he has the kind of pull it would take to sink a 2 Trillion + economy?

As far as NMM. Sometimes he has a point, sometimes he can be the genesis of a good debate, sometimes he is a good verbal pinata. Today ain't it. Sad actually.
Posted by: whitecollar redneck || 02/12/2004 9:17 Comments || Top||

#43  #28 German plutocrats were quite at ease with Adolph Hitler.
Posted by: Tancred || 02/12/2004 10:07 Comments || Top||

#44  sometimes he is a good verbal pinata
Well, impersonating a pinata is a felony in California... trust me I know.
Posted by: The Motorist Rodney King || 02/12/2004 10:27 Comments || Top||

#45  Wow, I must have missed some really bad news for the Demos.

Bush's Guard records and letters from people who knew him while he served were published yesterday.
Posted by: Robert Crawford || 02/12/2004 10:43 Comments || Top||

#46  I'd almost be willing to bet that Soros is going to try to hasten the decline of the dollar for his own gain and to try to hurt GWB. He was on Maria Bartiromo's show the other day talking about how Japan and China own so much US debt and how the fact that China's currency is tied to the value of the US dollar will put a lot of pressure on China, etc., to sell (or no longer buy) US treasuries. He is probably shorting the US$ in hopes of moving the $ further downwards.
Posted by: Tibor || 02/12/2004 10:49 Comments || Top||

#47  he only needs to be wrong once to lose his shirt. While I wouldn't underestimate him, I still think his arrogance is a good way to bring him down.

The Administration should set him up with a few inside deals and the promise of his billions to those who screw him.
Posted by: B || 02/12/2004 11:00 Comments || Top||

#48  I think we should watch him carefully, and catch him donating to a political party. After that, ban him from the United States, from any dealings in the United States, and from owning any resources or property in the United States. This is where the majority of intellectual property originates, and intellectual property is the cash cow of the future. If he's unable to get in on the ground floor on intellectual property, his fortune will gradually drain away. We also need to watch surrogates, and stomp on them as hard and as fast as we find them. George Soros is an intellectual pimple with an ego of Mount Pinatubo. With enough careful prodding, he'll explode.
Posted by: Old Patriot || 02/12/2004 12:58 Comments || Top||

#49  Well this just proves my earlier point that NMM doesn't read any of the posts on rantburg anymore, or for that matter the news I think. He's reduced to flying spittle.
Posted by: Valentine || 02/12/2004 13:08 Comments || Top||

#50  NMM? You forgot your medication again.
Posted by: Korora || 02/12/2004 13:14 Comments || Top||

#51  LOL, Rodney.
Posted by: whitecollar redneck || 02/12/2004 13:37 Comments || Top||


Great White North
Kanadian Kollege Klowns Want One Baffroom for All
The left just gets weirder and weirder...
Under a new initiative to provide equitable services, student unions of at least two Canadian universities -- Concordia and Simon Fraser -- are in talks with their administrations about where to build special washrooms this fall for the transgender population on campus. And at McGill University, a gender-neutral washroom is being designed for the first floor of the student centre. Renovations to the building are expected to be completed by the end of the academic year.
Too much time, meet too much money...
"To many, access is narrowly defined as a wheelchair ramp and a wheelchair-accessible toilet within a gender-segregated washroom. This definition of access simply does not reflect the reality for many students on this campus," said Brianna Hersey, a vice-president at the Students’ Society of McGill University in Montreal.
I wouldn’t be talking about reality in this context if I were you...
Gone would be the pictogram on the door, replaced by the word "washroom." And instead of a handful of stalls, it would be a single-unit washroom. It’s rare, but not impossible to find single-room washrooms, in small restaurants, for example. But student unions say they have felt increased pressure from transgender students to build specific gender-neutral washrooms on university grounds. Being transgender is defined as having personal characteristics that go beyond traditional gender boundaries and sexual norms. Some transgender people may have undergone surgery to become a member of the opposite sex.
Just what kind of pressure can transvestites exert? Threaten to stop buying Canadian-made bras, stop playing dress-up?
Ummmm... How many transgender stoodents are swarming these colleges? In the past fifty years, I've met precisely zero transgendered folk that I know of.
"There’s enough of a need that we even have the Transgender Alliance, which is a group on our campus that does advocacy work, and runs workshops," said Brianna, who is a gender-variant student, not committed to a specific gender. The Transgender Alliance has about 15 members, Brianna said. (Some members of the transgender community choose not to use honorifics with their names.)
Honor and transgender is not a concept to be used in the same sentance
Which specific gender is Brianna not committed to? Brianna's a feminine name, so does that imply he/she/it is not committed to the masculine? Or is he/she/it not committed to her feminine charms, wishing mightily that she had a pee bug and no bosom? At which point in building their strength to 15 did the transgendered folk achieve the influence necessary to co-opt the design and function of all the toidies on two campuses, which presumably are home to a thousand stoodents or more? At which point did they not have the influence? Below ten? If I get together 14 other men/women/others can I get machines installed in each bathroom to help me put my socks on?
Younger people tend to embrace change,
... though usually not to the point of leaving their gender...
and university campuses are usually where new ideas, such as gender-neutral washrooms, can take root, said Barbara Warren of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center in New York. "I think it’s absolutely fabulous," she said. "They’re creating a safe place for trans-people."
What, precisely, is unsafe about the existing facilities? Do the ceilings need raised? Do the thrones need widened? Help me out here...
Given the college educuation system in the USA and Canada, it is more likely that once young people realize what pro-gay initiatives like this really mean, they would not ’embrace’ it quite so closely.
At McGill, the first-floor of the new student centre building will have a washroom for transgender students to use with "ease and dignity," Brianna said.
"Hurrah!" Brianna said. "I can now poop with dignity! Isn't it grand?"
It’s also for disabled students and parents with babies.
If they want dignity they can use the male, or female baffrooms. Oh wait, which one are we talking about? You are confusing me. Maybe this whole concept is confused.
The Transgender Alliance and Queer McGill were among the groups who appealed for these facilities.
Duh!!
At Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, B.C., one student complained to the student newspaper, The Peak, that gender-neutral washrooms are a waste of university funds, especially when tuition fees are going up significantly in the province.
Lookidat! He's discovered cause and effect!
"It is moronic ideas like that that raise tuition, ladies, gentleman and everything in between. The university has far better things to do with its money than make sure that transgender people have a warm and happy place to go . . ." the student wrote in a letter to the editor.
When I was a tad, my Dad used to occasionally take me with him to the Silver Dollar Bar and Grille. This was, as should be such dens of iniquity, a seedy place, run by a lady with heavily waxed hair and lipstick on her teeth. There I would drink an unidentified cola while Dad renewed acquaintances with the friends of his disreputable youth, sometimes consuming as many as two beers in an afternoon. The sole facilities available for disposing of the cola drink consisted of a single, tiny room with a throne, a heavily stained sink, a sliver of Lava soap that never changed size, and a paper towel dispenser, all cunningly arranged so that when the door opened the entire establishment got to view whomever was occupying the throne. So it seems the hillbillies were ahead of the college-educated in this one. As a bonus, I should really warn them against replacing the paper towel rollers with those hot air machines that blow your hands dry, as happened in later years in the Silver Dollar. If you should meet an acquaintance in the parking lot and rearrange each other's features, the machines don't work nearly as well as the paper towel rollers for wiping the blood and the gravel from the remains of your face. Don't ask me how I know.
The idea came about after a student asked where someone would go to the bathroom if they didn’t fit into either gender category. "We realized there was nowhere.
"You'll just have to hold it 'til you get home!"
SFU has the duty to accommodate undue hardship," said Louis, who said he feels uncomfortable using a gender-specific washroom.
Even if it is self-imposed hardship?
How large is the transgender population at Simon Fraser? "It doesn’t really matter," Louis said. "If there was one student this would be necessary. It’s a public service that should be provided to all students."
Guess that answers my previous questions. The answer is fatuous and doesn't make any sense, but it answers the questions.
I can provide a service to the ’trans’ population, called removing one’s head from one’s ass. It is available to all students, not just ’trans’, and it is free.
Posted by: badanov || 02/12/2004 7:40:16 AM || Comments || Link || [336072 views] Top|| File under:

#1  If you've chosen to become the opposite sex, how can you be confused?
Posted by: Anonymous2U || 02/12/2004 9:29 Comments || Top||

#2  The trans-gendered - why do they hate us?
Posted by: Sparks || 02/12/2004 9:44 Comments || Top||

#3  Why not replace the standard pictograms with pictures of the body parts for which the room is designed? It doesn't matter what clothes you wear, after all, but whether you're an innie or an outie.
Posted by: Robert Crawford || 02/12/2004 10:31 Comments || Top||

#4  What would Mohammed Atta say?
Posted by: Matt || 02/12/2004 10:56 Comments || Top||

#5  I'll bet the farm that if we stopped pandering to all these nutcases, the number of people "identifying" themselves as being homosexual, bisexual, trans-sexual, or unisexual, would drop to a fraction of a percent, where it should be. The rest are just using all of this for special attention.
Posted by: Old Patriot || 02/12/2004 11:18 Comments || Top||

#6  In a similar vane my dog prefers privacy when doing his daily routine. When I am out in public with him would it not be for the benefit of all the dogs in the country who have this problem not to have a Dogs only restroom. Now if Dean was running and in the lead with his vast experience with dog urine etc this would be a shoo in. However I am concerned now that the Dimmycrats may not be looking at this in the proper light. I rest my case.
Posted by: dataman1 || 02/12/2004 12:08 Comments || Top||

#7  nothing surprises me anymore...trans-gender washrooms - gimme a break morons. If you got a penis your using the male pisser, if you don't then your using the femal one, case closed. Spend the money on something worthwhile like a class on rationale & logic......I know I'm a dreamer.
Posted by: Jarhead || 02/12/2004 13:17 Comments || Top||

#8  What the frelling m****cript is wrong with these beauzeaux!?
Posted by: Korora || 02/12/2004 15:36 Comments || Top||

#9  run by a lady with heavily waxed hair and lipstick on her teeth. There I would drink an unidentified cola while Dad renewed acquaintances with the friends of his disreputable youth, sometimes consuming as many as two beers in an afternoon.
Ah yes! Sounds like good times. I've always liked my Dad best in a situations just as you describe.
Posted by: Shipman || 02/12/2004 17:30 Comments || Top||


Home Front: Politix
Kerry pt. Deux
Just visited Drudge, she’s in Africa and he’s preparing a response.

And check out the intern pics at Right Wing News.

I put it here cos the thread’s getting long.
Posted by: Anonymous2U || 02/12/2004 10:01:52 PM || Comments || Link || [336070 views] Top|| File under:


CAMPAIGN DRAMA ROCKS DEMOCRATS
[snipped/duplicate post]
Posted by: tipper || 02/12/2004 6:08:47 PM || Comments || Link || [336066 views] Top|| File under:


Report: Bush not killed in ’Nam
iowahawk. EFL; there’s more laughs in the article. [Satire, from 1999 -Fred]
Austin, TX - In a shocking report that threatens to shake up the nascent 2000 presidential campaign, the Los Angeles Times reported Friday that Texas Governor George W. Bush "failed to die, or even sustain critical combat injuries" while a pilot for the Texas National Guard during the Vietnam War.

The blockbuster disclosure was only one of a number of embarrassing revelations uncovered in the Times report, the news of which continues to reverberate through Washington. "If true, these charges immediately call into question Mr. Bush’s fitness for office," said Democratic National Committee Chairman Roy Romer. "I can only hope that the American people will see the hypocrisy of a non-casualty running for our country’s highest elective office."

The front-page expose was the result of a six-month, $82 million investigation by the Times, which uncovered a raft of unseemly details about the GOP frontrunner’s mysterious past. "We were tipped off that Bush had a lot of skeletons in his closet, but nothing of this magnitude," said staff writer Richard Serrano, who compiled the 85,000-word story.

According to Serrano, the investigative staff at the Times became interested in the story late last year, when the Texas governor’s name was first floated as a possible candidate for the 2000 GOP presidential nomination. "It was somewhat odd - he was extremely evasive about answering questions about his past or his personal life," noted Serrano. "Even innocuous questions about his personal hygiene and teenage masturbation habits seemed to make him squirm."

The Times staff became more inquisitive after Bush formally declared his candidacy, when they received a series of anonymous tips from their Washington Bureau. "Our DC team uncovered some very juicy Bush tidbits while giving Sidney Blumenthal his complementary weekly pedicure," explained Serrano. "We knew then the story was just too big to keep the lid on."

What they found, according to Serrano, was "explosive."

"After hundreds of interviews, we were unable to identify a single instance of then-airman Bush being shot down by the Viet Cong, or even fragged by his own men," said Serrano. "What’s more, after returning to civilian life, Bush failed to go on a psychotic killing rampage, become a homeless drifter or even poignantly kill himself by swimming out to sea. This stands in stark contrast to the typical experience of most Vietnam veterans. At least in the movies I’ve seen."

While the Times was unable to identify any illegalities, Serrano said that the facts "are suggestive of favoritism and special treatment" for Bush.

"Oddly, this son of a Texas congressman was able to luxuriate in the decadent opulence of a Houston Air National Guard base, while poor boys were forced to do the dangerous work - wading through the rice paddies of southeast Asia, or leading exhausting protest marches at Oxford," added Serrano.
Posted by: Korora || 02/12/2004 3:21:54 PM || Comments || Link || [336091 views] Top|| File under:

#1  I heard he did not kill any baby civilians while not in Nam either!
Posted by: CrazyFool || 02/12/2004 15:49 Comments || Top||

#2  Unedited version has Bush in a Lubbock disco in 1978. More satire I take about being where there ain't. AC, were there any booze halls of any kind in the city of Lubbock then? Now?
Posted by: GK || 02/12/2004 16:44 Comments || Top||

#3  I heard he did not kill any baby civilians while not in Nam either!

That's more than Kerry can say. Remember, in his testimony before Congress, Kerry said that war crimes were "daily occurences" that happened "with the full knowledge of the chain of command". He was part of that chain of command; what war crimes has he been covering up?

(Yes, that's tongue-in-cheek.)
Posted by: Robert Crawford || 02/12/2004 17:27 Comments || Top||

#4  were there any booze halls of any kind in the city of Lubbock then? Now?

I will assume that's an ironical question.
Posted by: Shipman || 02/12/2004 17:37 Comments || Top||

#5  AFAIK alcohol has been banned from inside the city limits since always. Lubbock county is not dry. Atomic Conspiracy can tell us. At any rate the professor was no more serious about the disco than about the not killing babys.
Posted by: GK || 02/12/2004 17:56 Comments || Top||

#6  RC, Kerry was an officer on a p.t. boat (brown water Navy anyways) and bound to prevent or report any war crimes he had direct knowledge of. If he failed to do so, he should of been court martialed. Otoh, being on a boat, other then his own crew's actions, who did he have a chance to see commit crimes up close and personal?
Posted by: Jarhead || 02/12/2004 20:30 Comments || Top||

#7  Jarhead, my comment was tongue-in-cheek. I don't think Kerry is covering up any war crimes because I think he lied out his ass while testifying to Congress.
Posted by: Robert Crawford || 02/12/2004 20:46 Comments || Top||

#8  RC, right on. I'm w/you.

Though, if I had been sitting on a congressional inquiry board I would've asked "well, Mr. Kerry what did you do to prevent or report these crimes.........." Put his lying-ass on the hot seat.
Posted by: Jarhead || 02/12/2004 21:00 Comments || Top||

#9  I think Jarhead is onto seomthing here. I DEMAND that John Friggin Kerry produce documentation that he DID NOT commit war crimes during Vietnam. Come on prove a negative, if you can!
Posted by: Cyber Sarge || 02/12/2004 21:05 Comments || Top||


Senator Clinton Es La Mas Macha!!!!
Can’t believe I beat the rest of you to this!
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has been called many things, a savvy politician, a devoted wife.
a pain in the ass....
But Men’s Journal magazine is adding one more description to that list: Tough Guy. In its March issue, already on newsstands, the magazine publishes its annual list of "The 25 Toughest Guys in America" -- and Clinton weighs in at No. 25, just behind human crash test dummy Rusty Haight, who has been in 740 car wrecks. It’s the first time Men’s Journal has put a woman on the list, senior editor Tom Foster said. "I think just looking at what the country’s she’s been through and what she represents, that sort of stood for itself," Foster said. "Would you mess with her?" Foster referred to Clinton’s handling of former President Clinton’s sexual improprieties in the Oval Office. Hillary Clinton wrote about the pain caused by the president’s affair with a White House intern and the subsequent impeachment effort in "Living History," her White House memoir.
I’m sure that huge advance check helped soothe the pain...
Foster said Clinton’s listing--among athletes, martial artists, racers and wrestlers--is not a lambasting. "I would think people would take it as a compliment," he said. Clinton wasn’t the only Washington figure on the magazine’s Toughest Guys list, which was topped by Green Bay Packers quarterback Brett Favre. Arizona Sen. John McCain was No. 5, and Department of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was No. 21, two places above rapper 50 Cent, who was shot nine times and drove himself to a hospital. Telephone calls to the Democratic New York senator’s office were not immediately returned Wednesday.
Posted by: Desert Blondie || 02/12/2004 2:42:01 PM || Comments || Link || [336095 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Tough GUY? Blondie, they may know something that we don't.
Posted by: GK || 02/12/2004 14:55 Comments || Top||

#2  Look at her she's a cyborg from hell :)
Posted by: djohn66 || 02/12/2004 15:15 Comments || Top||

#3  Look at her she's a cyborg from hell :)
Posted by: djohn66 || 02/12/2004 15:15 Comments || Top||

#4  I think that old AC/DC song was written about her - "She's got balls"
Posted by: JerseyMike || 02/12/2004 15:26 Comments || Top||

#5  What an insult to put her in the same league with Favre, McCain (POW) Rumsfeld...but it does seem appropriate that she is one above a crash test dummy.

So does this signal the beginning of the excessive fawning for Hillary blitz?
Posted by: B || 02/12/2004 15:35 Comments || Top||

#6  she is one above a crash test dummy.

That's one below B. And Rumsfeld should be number one. He could be shot 9 times, break his wrist, and still have the sense of direction to run over Micheal Moore. Favre only got to 1# because the editors were Packer fans.
Posted by: Anonymous || 02/12/2004 15:54 Comments || Top||

#7  I went shopping this noon and they were projecting some scene of Terminator III, "Raise of the machines". The robot who is fighting against Arnold looked strangely familiar, now I know, it was Hillary.
Posted by: JFM || 02/12/2004 15:56 Comments || Top||

#8  None of this is important... just keep an eye on the spot on H's cranium... she's shedding like AlGore.
Posted by: Shipman || 02/12/2004 16:26 Comments || Top||

#9  Something to look forward to Ship. The Dimmycrat flu perhaps.
Posted by: dataman1 || 02/12/2004 18:10 Comments || Top||

#10  I heard she's hung like a horse to.......
Posted by: Jarhead || 02/12/2004 21:02 Comments || Top||

#11  Me thinks there was never a drop of liquid out of that womans brest.
Posted by: Lucky || 02/12/2004 22:52 Comments || Top||


KERRY’s GOT A GIRLFRIEND!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Oh, boy, this is going to get good!
A frantic behind-the-scenes drama is unfolding around Sen. John Kerry and his quest to lockup the Democratic nomination for president, the DRUDGE REPORT can reveal. Intrigue surrounds a woman who recently fled the country, reportedly at the prodding of Kerry. A serious investigation of the woman and the nature of her relationship with Sen. John Kerry has been underway at TIME magazine, ABC NEWS, the WASHINGTON POST, THE HILL and the ASSOCIATED PRESS, where the woman in question once worked.

MORE A close friend of the woman first approached a reporter late last year claiming fantastic stories -- stories that now threaten to turn the race for the presidency on its head! In an off-the-record conversation with a dozen reporters earlier this week, General Wesley Clark plainly stated: "Kerry will implode over an intern issue." [Three reporters in attendance confirm Clark made the startling comments.] The Kerry commotion is why Howard Dean has turned increasingly aggressive against Kerry in recent days, and is the key reason why Dean reversed his decision not to drop out of the race after Wisconsin, top campaign sources tell the DRUDGE REPORT.
Posted by: Anonymous2U || 02/12/2004 11:26:41 AM || Comments || Link || [336090 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Drudge is down.
Posted by: Anonymous2U || 02/12/2004 11:30 Comments || Top||

#2  Of course he does. Just like Bill Clinton, he is trying to follow in John F. Kennedy's footsteps.
Posted by: Steve || 02/12/2004 11:31 Comments || Top||

#3  noooooo!! He needs to get the nomination!! shhhh...don't tell anyone until after the primary.

I'm so depressed
Posted by: B || 02/12/2004 11:35 Comments || Top||

#4  It's an INTERN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Posted by: Anonymous2U || 02/12/2004 11:36 Comments || Top||

#5  here it is:
Drudge Flash
Posted by: Frank G || 02/12/2004 11:38 Comments || Top||

#6 
Wait - this can't be true, Interns aren't rich widows.
Posted by: JerseyMike || 02/12/2004 11:38 Comments || Top||

#7  yeah baby!!!!! deaniacs re-unite!!!!!!
Posted by: muck4doo || 02/12/2004 11:38 Comments || Top||

#8  Here's the post:
CAMPAIGN DRAMA ROCKS DEMOCRATS: KERRY FIGHTS OFF MEDIA PROBE OF RECENT ALLEGED INFIDELITY, RIVALS PREDICT RUIN
**World Exclusive**
**Must Credit the DRUDGE REPORT**

A frantic behind-the-scenes drama is unfolding around Sen. John Kerry and his quest to lockup the Democratic nomination for president, the DRUDGE REPORT can reveal.

Intrigue surrounds a woman who recently fled the country, reportedly at the prodding of Kerry, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.

A serious investigation of the woman and the nature of her relationship with Sen. John Kerry has been underway at TIME magazine, ABC NEWS, the WASHINGTON POST and the ASSOCIATED PRESS, where the woman in question once worked.

MORE

A close friend of the woman first approached a reporter late last year claiming fantastic stories -- stories that now threaten to turn the race for the presidency on its head!

In an off-the-record conversation with a dozen reporters earlier this week, General Wesley Clark plainly stated: "Kerry will implode over an intern issue." [Three reporters in attendance confirm Clark made the startling comments.]

The Kerry commotion is why Howard Dean has turned increasingly aggressive against Kerry in recent days, and is the key reason why Dean reversed his decision not to drop out of the race after Wisconsin, top campaign sources tell the DRUDGE REPORT.
MORE DEVELOPING
Posted by: Frank G || 02/12/2004 11:41 Comments || Top||

#9  And here I was wondering yesterday when Hillary was going to kneecap little johnny.
Posted by: Steve || 02/12/2004 11:43 Comments || Top||

#10  Damn! They couldn't have kept a lid on this until, say, October 31?

OT, but everyone needs to check the pic of GWB and Jane Fonda at Scrappleface. An all-timer.

Steve, what a crazy idea. I'm almost certain you're right.
Posted by: Matt || 02/12/2004 11:46 Comments || Top||

#11  DEER LOWARD this is going to be interesting.
Posted by: Laurence of the Rats || 02/12/2004 11:47 Comments || Top||

#12  Steve, you beat me to it.
LH, a question, if "someone" succeeds in derailing Kerry can Hillary be put on the ballot at the Democrat's convention?
Posted by: GK || 02/12/2004 11:49 Comments || Top||

#13  AND he shipped her out of the country!!!!
Posted by: Anonymous2U || 02/12/2004 11:52 Comments || Top||

#14  GK, if no one has locked up enough delegates before the convention, yes. She won't accept it unless she thinks Bush will loose.
Posted by: Steve || 02/12/2004 11:52 Comments || Top||

#15  Pictures!? I bet she's a cupcake. But his having an affair wont bring him down. But what else is involved. Whats this about her leaving the country? Were there threats?
Posted by: Lucky || 02/12/2004 11:53 Comments || Top||

#16  #16 Pardon me Senator Kerry, but Senator Hart is holding for you on line one...
Posted by: TiltingWindmill || 02/12/2004 11:53 Comments || Top||

#17  Intrigue surrounds a woman who recently fled the country, reportedly at the prodding of Kerry, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.

Took a page out of the Jacko handbook.
Posted by: Lil Dhimmi || 02/12/2004 11:53 Comments || Top||

#18  Senator? President Clinton is on line two. Shall I conference him in with you and Senator Hart?
Posted by: TiltingWindmill || 02/12/2004 11:54 Comments || Top||

#19  This is terrible. I'd much rather face Kerry than Edwards.
Posted by: someone || 02/12/2004 11:55 Comments || Top||

#20  There's more according to her girlfriend.

Actually I was talking about this w/a friend of mine, the National Equirer had JF-G on the cover, women, drugs......

Oh, typical 60s boomer.
Posted by: Anonymous2U || 02/12/2004 11:57 Comments || Top||

#21  I don't know whether to laugh or cry... this isn't a campaign, this is a clusterfuck.

God, it doesn't get a whole lot funnier than this, does it? LOL...
Posted by: Dave D. || 02/12/2004 11:59 Comments || Top||

#22  lies!! lies!! Zionist lies!! John Ashcroft Lies!! Don't listen.

Republicans/Democrats/Libertarians/ VOTE FOR KERRY IN THE PRIMARY!!
Posted by: B || 02/12/2004 12:00 Comments || Top||

#23  I thought this was a REQUIREMENT to be a candidate.
Posted by: Nonnymus || 02/12/2004 12:03 Comments || Top||

#24  Rush just said that Gore's pulling out some 2000 files.

They all knew and they protected him was Rush's point.
Posted by: Anonymous2U || 02/12/2004 12:07 Comments || Top||

#25  On the bright side, Bashir Assad is standing on a window ledge right now.
Posted by: Matt || 02/12/2004 12:07 Comments || Top||

#26  Some guys just don't get it . . . if you're a married man, and you try to have a little "tomato" on the side, it'll "ketchup" with you sooner or later.
Posted by: Mike || 02/12/2004 12:09 Comments || Top||

#27  He dared to cheat on that shreiking harpy wife of his? If he wasn't a war hero before, he will be now.
Posted by: BH || 02/12/2004 12:12 Comments || Top||

#28  Mike..cute

I guess the biggest question is will she pull the plug on his financing or not?
Posted by: B || 02/12/2004 12:17 Comments || Top||

#29  Allah be praised! The maker of worlds is back in business!
Posted by: Shipman || 02/12/2004 12:20 Comments || Top||

#30  So, how do you qualify for an intern? Just an academic inquiry.
Posted by: Chuck Simmins || 02/12/2004 12:24 Comments || Top||

#31  Chuck--

Maybe not a intern--Drudge says she worked for Associated Press.
Posted by: BMN || 02/12/2004 12:27 Comments || Top||

#32  sooo...I guess the only real question left concerning Kerry is who is going to get his Senate seat? A dem or repub?
Posted by: B || 02/12/2004 12:34 Comments || Top||

#33  BH, right on. His loud-mouthed wife may slice his nuts off, if this is true.

November is a long way off; watch for Hillary.
Posted by: Les Nessman || 02/12/2004 12:38 Comments || Top||

#34  Steve:

You wrote: And here I was wondering yesterday when Hillary was going to kneecap little johnny.

If that's true . . . man, my irony detector is going to go off-scale high.
Posted by: Mike || 02/12/2004 12:58 Comments || Top||

#35  ahh...well...look at the bright side - a disgruntled Kerry probably has some pretty good dirt on the Democrats that he will be more than happy to share if he loses his nomination and his Senate seat.
Posted by: B || 02/12/2004 13:00 Comments || Top||

#36  I wonder what color dress she has in storage? And does anybody know the meaning of "is"?
Posted by: Fred || 02/12/2004 13:06 Comments || Top||

#37  Hey, I found out where all these interns come from: Link
Posted by: Chuck Simmins || 02/12/2004 13:46 Comments || Top||

#38  "Intrigue surrounds a woman who recently fled the country..."

Wonder if that explains this...
Posted by: Fred || 02/12/2004 13:58 Comments || Top||

#39  #18 Scrappleface is already on it, Tilting.
EFL: Whether the Drudge story is true or not, said Mr. Clinton, I finally see a candidate with whom I can identify. I was withholding my endorsement until I found a candidate who would resonate with mainstream Democrats the way I did. John F. Kerry is the man.
Posted by: GK || 02/12/2004 15:04 Comments || Top||

#40  Even funnier is that this is a "Blue on Blue" attack.

Maybe Kerry shouldn't have fired that Lehane character when his campaign was sucking eggs.
Posted by: Daniel King || 02/12/2004 15:20 Comments || Top||

#41  B, Lose his Senate seat? Massachusetts returns a murderer like clockwork. What make you think they would reject a gigilo?
Posted by: Mr. Davis || 02/12/2004 15:24 Comments || Top||

#42  Too good to be true.
Posted by: Michael || 02/12/2004 15:25 Comments || Top||

#43  Theresa Heinz Kerry, the outspoken ketchup heiress, in an interview last year:
As if on cue, the topic turns to Hillary. "I don't think I could have coped so well. I would've been like psheww!" She makes a gunshot noise. "I used to say to my husband, my late husband, 'If you ever get something, I'll maim you. Not kill you, just maim you.' And we'd laugh, laugh, laugh."

Boy, if this is true, that haughty, French-looking guy is like so dead.
Posted by: Mike || 02/12/2004 15:29 Comments || Top||

#44  The Professor's reporting the blogosphere outed this on 2/6.

TIME was going to print it next week.
Posted by: Anonymous2U || 02/12/2004 15:43 Comments || Top||

#45  that interview also says,

"She says she has never once, in either of her marriages, worried about infidelity. “I never have. Not for one day. Because what I expect of them, they have a right to expect of me. Maybe I’m into 18-year-olds “That was a joke,” Black says.

Hmmm....who knows, maybe she is into 18 year olds if he had to clarify that she was kidding. I find it hard to believe, considering her wealth and how many people already knew about this, that she was the last to know.

What I think is the most hilarious about this is ...given all of the other sleezy things that Dem's should hate about him....this is the issue that got the big reaction. And this from the party of "private matters".
Posted by: B || 02/12/2004 15:47 Comments || Top||

#46  If you ever get something, I'll maim you. Not kill you, just maim you

I'll never look at a ketchup bottle the same way again...
Posted by: Charles || 02/12/2004 16:04 Comments || Top||

#47  I'm with you Charles... But damn... it's hard to make a knock off Heinz 57...
Posted by: Shipman || 02/12/2004 16:29 Comments || Top||

#48  Vote for Kerry he didn't drown her.
Posted by: AntiPasto || 02/12/2004 16:30 Comments || Top||

#49  Oh no please, not again!
But I have a question? Why would Clark drop out knowing that Kerry would "implode"? Doesn't make sense to me.
Btw I see Edwards as the most "dangerous" candidate... because of his "positive blandness". He'd be hard to attack and seems to be the only one in this campaign who has not committed major mistakes.
Don't be fooled by Edward's "lack of experience". Remember how much experience Bush had, especially in foreign policy. Presidents learn fast.
Posted by: True German Ally || 02/12/2004 16:48 Comments || Top||

#50  TGA: Bill Quick over on www.dailypundit.com has a good analysis of this, esp. your comments on Clark and Edwards. It's definitely worth a look.
Posted by: Dave D. || 02/12/2004 17:13 Comments || Top||

#51  TGA, I agree that Edwards is more dangerous to a Bush reelection, but he'd also be easier to live with if elected since he leans towards the center.
Posted by: ruprecht || 02/12/2004 17:17 Comments || Top||

#52  PATHETIC!!! Bush orders a war based on very flimsy evidence. Thousands of people die. Yet, a politician's sex life is what this group cares about. Absolutely pathetic.
Posted by: Anonymous || 02/12/2004 17:18 Comments || Top||

#53  Anonymous - I have to admit that I agree with you. Kerry has many issues that we should be much more concerned with. John Ashcroft, the neocons, Bush cronies, and the corporate weenies are laughing, but we must show them who laughs last. Make sure your friends get out and vote for Kerry in the primaries so that we can bury these Zionist swine.
Posted by: B || 02/12/2004 17:31 Comments || Top||

#54  Yo Anon (Osamanaut)

YAWN.
You're pathetic.
Posted by: Evert Visser || 02/12/2004 17:32 Comments || Top||

#55  PATHETIC is right! It's pathetic that we voters should be so concerned that a person who could hold the highest office in the land have enough integrity and morality not to cheat on his wife! I mean, just because he could be cheating and lying to the person he took the vow of marriage to, shares his bed with, and who is his closest confidante, that doesn't mean he'd lie and screw us over, does it?
Posted by: Dar || 02/12/2004 17:34 Comments || Top||

#56  "positive blandness".
Good Heavens... what a nasty description. Where was that from?

I'm with B vote Kerry.
B is it okay if I ask my friends at the home to vote for Kerry? Napoleon VII is confusing them.
Posted by: Shipman || 02/12/2004 17:43 Comments || Top||

#57  Dave D, interesting analysis of Dailypundit, but maybe a bit too cunning a plan?
Edwards may seem like an empty suit right now but that could change if Kerry drops out (and Dean is finished already).
I don't think Kerry can win against Bush... even those people disgruntled somewhat with the WMD issue will not vote for someone who may have been a Vietnam hero but would be a walking security hazard in these dangerous times.
Posted by: True German Ally || 02/12/2004 17:45 Comments || Top||

#58  "Positive Blandness" is something I just invented, Shipman... should I trademark it?
Posted by: True German Ally || 02/12/2004 17:48 Comments || Top||

#59  Anon.. I don't care if Kerry had a relationship with a sow.I'm amused.Also,I live next to a country where Islamic terrorists frequently massacre innocent people.I'd sleep better with President Bush,Edwards or even Clinton (Hillary) in the office,rather the guy who,it seems,never
left the jungles of 'Nam behind him.
Posted by: El Id || 02/12/2004 17:58 Comments || Top||

#60  TGA, one point you should consider is that Edwards is a "trial lawyer", an occupation that is commonly viewed as only three or four notches below Mafia hitman. There's a big "Ick!" factor out there that hasn't shown up yet.
Posted by: Matt || 02/12/2004 18:02 Comments || Top||

#61  Ah yes, what are 12 trial lawyers chained to each other at the bottom of the ocean?

A good start...
Posted by: True German Ally || 02/12/2004 18:13 Comments || Top||

#62  This hurts all the Dems. So if Edwards gets the nomination, what are they gonna say? ..."Vote for Eddie Baby, he kept his pants on" It's just a big fat reminder of the Clinton circus and right on time i say.
Posted by: Rex Mundi || 02/12/2004 18:25 Comments || Top||

#63  One thing this also shows is that, whereas Bush has been under the microscope for years, the Dems are just walking up to the human shredder.
Posted by: Matt || 02/12/2004 18:50 Comments || Top||

#64  I wonder how accomodating 60 Minutes will be to Kerry. They edited that piece with Bill and Hillary just so. Producer of the show bragged about it, actually.

Is Kerry really beloved by the media? Stay tuned.
Posted by: eLarson || 02/12/2004 19:44 Comments || Top||

#65  Edwards duped the folks here in NC 6 years ago. Polls here show he probably wouldn't be reelected as senator if he was running. Friend of mine in NE is a big democrat and she went to the Iowa festival where Hillary spoke. Afterwards she was telling me how impressed she was with Edwards. I filled her in on his current popularity. He's dangerous because he knows how to spin and talk a good line.
Posted by: AF Lady || 02/12/2004 20:00 Comments || Top||

#66  So, folks, I just got back from a road planning meeting. Trying to catch up. Where are the boob shots?
Posted by: Alaska Paul || 02/12/2004 20:26 Comments || Top||

#67  I've been feeling a little paranoid and conspiratorial today, so I am wondering if the JFK-redux campaign might have cooked this up themselves.

The liberal establishment is based largely on the values of the entertainment industry, where adultery is considered at least a rite of passage and often something of a status symbol, something like feminists listing their abortions on their resumes.

For the lib faithful this will cement Kerry's identification with two of their most revered idols, John Kennedy and Bill Clinton.

It also diverts attention from the fast-breaking revelations about Kerry's over-the-top rhetoric and campus-cong associations during his anti-war protest phase.
Posted by: Atomic Conspiracy || 02/12/2004 21:17 Comments || Top||

#68  Edwards - just what we need, another sweet talkin' Southern Boy.
Posted by: Anonymous2U || 02/12/2004 21:37 Comments || Top||

#69  Atomic Conspiracy - interesting thought. I was thinking how ironic it was, considering all of the slime attached to Kerry, that the adultery charge is what people seem to care most about.

Maybe they really do think they can deflect the focus of the discussion to this topic (instead of his anti-war activities, zero bill authorization and millionaire populism). In the minds of the currently-in-power-boomer-left, that just might work.

However, if that is the plan, I think they miscalculated. I agree with whoever said that this just reestablishes the Dems as untrustworthy cads. Dems need the middle and I think the majority are tired of the sleeze oozing from their party.
Posted by: B || 02/13/2004 7:01 Comments || Top||


Can John Kerry hold on to his lead?
ELF
Very interestiiiiing. Read the last few paragraphs
Harold Wilson, that British politician more canny than admired, usefully reminded his audience that things can change very quickly in politics. "A week is a long time," he said, in politics, and we have seen this over and over in the American scene these past months... The lanky and experienced Massachusetts senator has money to burn. No one wants to say it, but his wife’s near billion-dollar fortune at the very least permits him to spend all his own, more modest, fortune to smooth his way. She can’t shovel money directly into his campaign, but the mere fact of her fortune gives confidence to other contributors or lenders that they’re backing a winner. He has seemingly unlimited self-confidence, despite many trip-ups in his long career.
And now he has Tiffany...
But no senator has won the keys to the White House since John F. Kennedy. There’s a reason why senators don’t tend to win. They’ve been on the record for too long on too many issues. There are too many interest groups they have had to cultivate and satiate to stay in politics. Sam Nunn, a powerful senator from Georgia who didn’t even have to face serious re-election opposition, left the Senate in 1996 because he tired of spending his evenings entertaining his major supporters and running over to the Senate to vote. At the prime of life, he wanted to rediscover his family. The real issue that Kerry must resolve is, however, character. Now that he is the front-runner, he must not only answer to all the charges of serving special interests that have risen and will still rise, he has to satisfy the public that he is, not to put too fine a point on it, an honorable man. There are questions.
Question: "What's her name, Senator?"
Question: "Is she double-jointed?"
Question: "Is she, like, into Jolly Green Giant cream corn sessions?"
Kerry has managed to straddle
...(an unfortunate choice of terminology today)...
many issues and so it is difficult to discern his real beliefs -- other than in himself. He votes for the war in Iraq so he doesn’t look "wet" and then votes against Pentagon budget rises, so he can please the liberal Democrats, who give him one of their highest ratings. When he looks at an acquaintance, he always seems to be looking just past, to see if someone more important lurks behind his interlocutor.
Either that, or he's trying to imagine what they look like nekkid...
Of course that’s just standard politics. But people want something more. He now makes much of his decorations from the war in Vietnam, to appeal to centrists and conservatives, without reminding those audiences that he for long was a leader of Vietnam veterans against the war. Indeed, assiduous searchers, looking for his vulnerabilities, will find much of interest in that period of his life. For example, the fabled and distinguished chief of naval operations (CNO), Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, told me -- 30 years ago when he was still CNO -- that during his own command of US naval forces in Vietnam, just prior to his anointment as CNO, young Kerry had created great problems for him and the other top brass, by killing so many non-combatant civilians and going after other non-military targets. "We had virtually to straight-jacket him to keep him under control," the admiral said. "Bud" Zumwalt got it right when he assessed Kerry as having large ambitions -- but promised that his career in Vietnam would haunt him if he were ever on the national stage.
Wonder if that conversation's on tape?
It is that sort of thing that senators don’t have to worry about. But if they become a front-runner for president, the whole ball-game changes. Their past is scrutinized with a fine-tooth comb. In Kerry’s case, for example, he has shown precious little interest in Asia since his tour in Vietnam, and there is little doubt that he will follow the standard Democratic party, pro-Beijing, line. But every word he’s ever spoken on it will be scrutinized. That is why it is not only true that a week is a long time in politics. But, as they say in American politics, "It ain’t over until the fat lady sings."
Is she gonna sing "Norwegian Wood" this time?
Posted by: tipper || 02/12/2004 10:03:40 AM || Comments || Link || [336090 views] Top|| File under:

#1  We had virtually to straight-jacket him to keep him under control

Are we talking about Bob or John?
Posted by: Shipman || 02/12/2004 10:22 Comments || Top||

#2  I think the Dems are soon going to experience some major pangs of Buyer's Remorse over John Kerry: even if I were still a Democrat, and even if 9/11 had never happened, I don't think anyone could convince me to vote for this guy.

Dude, who stole my party???
Posted by: Dave D. || 02/12/2004 10:44 Comments || Top||

#3  all of you in states where the dem primary hasn't been held yet need to get out and vote for Kerry!
Posted by: B || 02/12/2004 10:46 Comments || Top||

#4  Well as you may know "we in the states" aren't all Dimmycrats. Besides the great majority of us are war mongering imperailists who think Allah is a homo and that the best solution to all the world's problems is to bomb them back to the stone age...In some cases since some may have not made the leap to stone age to something before it....As for Europeans, most of us could give a hoot less about what is thought of us over there or anywhere for that matter. I hope that answers your naive assertions about "we". Of course that is only my opinion.
Posted by: dataman1 || 02/12/2004 11:31 Comments || Top||

#5  dataman...it doesn't matter - get your rear end off that chair and go vote for Kerry!! Encourage all your friends to do the same. You got nothing to lose. Bush is the Republican nominee, regardless.

Kerry is a slam dunk loser. Now get on down to your local primary and VOTE FOR KERRY!!
Posted by: B || 02/12/2004 12:05 Comments || Top||

#6  You gotta be serious. A man who dishonored his country and his uniform with his anti war activities. Aiding and comforting the enemy. I'd rather seen him thrown in jail for the traitor he is to his country and his flag.
Posted by: dataman1 || 02/12/2004 12:22 Comments || Top||

#7  young Kerry had created great problems for him and the other top brass, by killing so many non-combatant civilians and going after other non-military targets.

Hmm.... interesting..... Is there any documentation of Kerry's Civilian kills during his 'honorable' service in Nam?
Posted by: CrazyFool || 02/12/2004 12:24 Comments || Top||

#8  DM1, I think what B is trying to say is vote for Kerry to get the dem nomination so that Bush can crush him in November. However, I don't think it matters who the dems pick, Dean - whacko, Edwards - too inexperienced and prolly couldn't win his seat back in NC according to my friends up there. Kucinich/Sharpton - bwhahahaha.
Posted by: Jarhead || 02/12/2004 13:37 Comments || Top||

#9  Is she gonna sing "Norwegian Wood" this time
Funny for you maybe, but I grew up thinking a Sitar was a Scandinavian guitar... when I learned the truth it was to late... I was OP deaf.
Posted by: Shipman || 02/12/2004 17:47 Comments || Top||

#10  Excellent post Tipper, coffee up my nose, shirt, pants, desk, dripping down monitor.

Like if Tiffany and Monica ever do, you know...together?
Posted by: john || 02/12/2004 21:29 Comments || Top||


Bush obfuscations may sink him
We have just witnessed a defining moment of this year’s American presidential election. Rather than helping George W. Bush, as the pundits have it, his hour-long televised interview last Sunday will haunt him, so laced was it with falsehoods and impregnated with questions. If you add his other recent pronouncements, and those of Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and others, it becomes clear that the administration has decided not to come clean on the invasion of Iraq. It is going to tough it out. That guarantees a continuation of the ever-shifting rationale on why about 16,000 Iraqis and 525 Americans are dead, so far.

As self-defeating as the strategy may be for the Republicans, it will benefit the American body politic. The election can now be about what it should be: Bush’s integrity and judgment in waging a unilateral war on false premises, thereby squandering the most precious commodity of an American president abroad — legitimacy. The justification for the war has come down to intent — Saddam Hussein’s, as surmised by Bush. That, plus a series of suppositions. Saddam "could have developed a nuclear weapon over time," said Bush, in his Meet The Press interview. The dictator "had the capacity to make a weapon."

In lockstep, George Tenet, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, intoned: Iraq had "intended to reconstitute its nuclear program." It had "intended to develop biological weapons." It had "the intent and the capability to convert civilian industry to chemical weapons production." The obfuscations are a far cry from the pre-war certitude about Iraqi weapons aimed right at America, and represents a retrenchment even from the recent assertions about Saddam’s "weapons programs," and his "weapons-related program activities."

On the embarrassing reality that no weapons have been unearthed, the administration is offering two explanations:
Rumsfeld: That weapons have not been found does not mean that they are not there. They could be found in a hole, just as Saddam was.

Bush: That the weapons are not there does not mean they were not there.
"They could have been destroyed during the war. Saddam and his henchmen could have destroyed them as we entered Iraq. They could have been hidden. They could have been transferred to another country." If the weapons were as lethal as Bush said they were, how could they have been destroyed safely and without leaving a trace?

Bush has also backpedalled, in two subtle ways, on his pre-war charge that Iraq was linked to Osama bin Laden. He said Sunday Saddam could have let a lethal weapon "fall into the hands of a shadowy terrorist network." So, it’s not Al Qaeda any longer. Second, Bush twice cited Saddam’s "paying for suicide bombers," a reference to his practice of helping the family of Palestinian suicide bombers. But Iraq was not invaded in the name of punishing Saddam for aiding anti-Israeli terrorism but because his alleged terrorist links ostensibly threatened America.

All these are clear markers for Americans to see how far their president has moved from what he told them before the war. Bush has done something even more useful. Until now, he had tended to blame flawed pre-war intelligence and not discuss his own faulty policy. But on Sunday, he owned up to the latter and expanded on the beliefs that drive his doctrine of pre-emptive wars. The post-9/11 world is a dangerous place, he said, and he, as "a war president," must whack the bad guys before they whack America. Saddam was "dangerous with weapons," "dangerous with the ability to make weapons," and was "a dangerous man in the dangerous part of the world." Hence the invasion. That skips over three details: Saddam was not linked to 9/11; he posed little or no danger to the U.S. and the decision to topple him had been made long before that day.

Bush gave two more justifications for the war. "I don’t think America can stand by and hope for the best from a madman, and I believe it is essential that when we see a threat, we deal with those threats before they become imminent. It’s too late if they become imminent." That prompted this question by a letter writer to the editor of The New York Times: "Is there a country we couldn’t attack with this policy?"

Bush also argued that "containment doesn’t work with a man who is a madman. Remember, he had used weapons against his own people." The same point was made by Rumsfeld to a meeting of NATO ministers last week. "Think about what was going on in Iraq a year ago with people being tortured, rape rooms, mass graves, gross corruption, a country that has used chemical weapons against its own people." But last year was not when Saddam’s cruelties were at their peak, as Human Rights Watch noted last week. It was in the 1980s when he used chemical weapons against Iraqi Kurds and Iranians. That was the time he was America’s ally. Rumsfeld himself visited him in Baghdad in 1983 as an envoy of Ronald Reagan and presented the dictator with a pair of golden spurs.

Bush has written the script for the election campaign far better than the Democrats could ever have.
Posted by: Rob Perbowski || 02/12/2004 9:22:48 AM || Comments || Link || [336088 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Why do people on the left love terrorists and dictators so much? Do you remember the days when leftists were progressive and wanted freedom for the world.... ahhh how things have changed.
Posted by: Damn_Proud_American || 02/12/2004 9:33 Comments || Top||

#2  Troll Alert! The link to Star doesn't work. So methinks Cybil is back with another persona. But ya gotta love this troll. He can write is own stuff including complete sentences, correct spelling, punctuation, etc. Next, he'll probably start adding provocative comments to his own post.
Posted by: GK || 02/12/2004 9:41 Comments || Top||

#3  I think the love has come far more from the right. As the article say's Rumsfeld himself went to meet the dictator/murderer Saddam himself.

This isn't about leftist loving terrorists/dictators, its about 525 of our service men/women dying in a war which was not needed. The premis our country went to war on was fabricated by the current administration.
Posted by: Borris Ivanho || 02/12/2004 9:45 Comments || Top||

#4  Boris, you obviously get off on seeing 25 million people enslaved to a ruthless dictator. I expect no less from a leftist.
Posted by: Damn_Proud_American || 02/12/2004 9:50 Comments || Top||

#5  Anyone order Troll for breakfast?
Posted by: Cyber Sarge || 02/12/2004 9:51 Comments || Top||

#6  DPA - the far left of today has become the far right of our parents generation.

They are bigoted and intolerant. They proudly proclaim they can't stand all Republicans, Rednecks and Religious people regardless (over 1/2 of America) just like the far right used to hate all blacks and jews and immigrants). They feel justified in being rude to them ...because they believe them to be inferior.

Instead of supporting free speech, they favor squelching it with PC codes, just like the right use to try to do with heresey accusations. And they openly mock any of their compatriots who attempt to be more open minded - just like the right used to do with comments like "jew lover or N***** lover.

They demand perfection of others that they don't demand of themselves - just like the far right used to do when they noted the sins of non-believers but hypocritically failed to acknowledge the adultery, greed and unkindess of their own parish.

The list goes on and on. The hate is the same; all that has changed over time is the focus of the hate. They grew up and became their parents.
Posted by: B || 02/12/2004 9:58 Comments || Top||

#7  D_P_A, I don't consider myself a leftist. I initially agreed with this war, however after hearing that all the reasons for going to war were lies, the current administration should be ashamed.
Posted by: Borris Ivanho || 02/12/2004 10:00 Comments || Top||

#8  great article.. No doubt I will now be stigmatised as a leftist dictator lover.. sigh
Posted by: lyot || 02/12/2004 10:03 Comments || Top||

#9  Boris, you said "dying in a war which was not needed"... which means you get off on there being 25 million slaves to a ruthless, psycopathic autocrat. It's as simple as that.
Posted by: Damn_Proud_American || 02/12/2004 10:04 Comments || Top||

#10  lyot, well aren't you?
Posted by: Damn_Proud_American || 02/12/2004 10:07 Comments || Top||

#11  after hearing that all the reasons for going to war were lies

Saddam didn't operate a police state? Saddam wasn't pursuing WMD?

You have very odd definitions of both "all" and "lies", but considering you're a fascist-loving troll, I'm not surprised.
Posted by: Robert Crawford || 02/12/2004 10:14 Comments || Top||

#12  Thanks Rob/Boris for making my prediction come true.
No CS I wanted Grapefruit;they're sweeter.
Posted by: GK || 02/12/2004 10:16 Comments || Top||

#13  The messge is getting out! Big visibility events this Saturday. Ivanho you got your house party set up yet? Hit the bat Deano! If anyone see's Nuss Ratchett tell her I'll be back before Jeapordy for Slow Folks is on.
Posted by: Sir Walter Ridley Scott || 02/12/2004 10:17 Comments || Top||

#14  I think the love has come far more from the right. As the article say's Rumsfeld himself went to meet the dictator/murderer Saddam himself.

Rumsfeld only met with Saddam as part of an effort to restore diplomatic relations with Iraq (which had been on ice for over a decade) - the Communist countries (and France) not only had long-standing diplomatic relations with Iraq, they sold major weapons systems to him, including ships, planes and nuclear reactors. Why did the US restore diplomatic relations with Iraq? Because it was a useful ally* in the effort against Iranian expansion in the Middle East. (Similarly, Nixon initiated diplomatic relations with Mao-ruled Communist China because he felt the China Card would be useful in any future confrontation with the Soviet Union. Interestingly enough, as with Iraq, the US was probably one of the last major countries in the world to establish diplomatic relations with Communist China - most of Europe had already acknowledged Communist sovereignty over the Chinese mainland - Europe understands that to trade with mass murderers is not an indication of moral support for their atrocities).

* An ally is simply a nation with which we have common interests for a period of time. Allies are not our friends for eternity - in fact, they will do things that are against our interests - and principles - from time to time. And we are certainly not our allies' keeper - what they do outside of the parameters of the alliance is none of our business.
Posted by: Zhang Fei || 02/12/2004 10:22 Comments || Top||

#15  Rob Perbowski: It was in the 1980s when he used chemical weapons against Iraqi Kurds and Iranians. That was the time he was America’s ally.

Why does the left lie so effortlessly? It was in the early '80's that Rumsfeld met with Saddam -while the Communist countries (and France) were selling tanks, ships and artillery to Iraq - and the late '80's when Saddam used his chemical weapons against Iran, and then the Kurds. Meeting with a dictator and presenting goodwill gifts is not the same as being responsible for his actions. Why does the left persist in its accusation that merely meeting Saddam made the US complicit in his actions? Because it's part and parcel of their traitorous Communist and totalitarian ideology - arms sales by foreign countries to Iraq are acceptable, whereas mere diplomatic openings on the part of the US with Iraq are proof of American evil.
Posted by: Zhang Fei || 02/12/2004 11:35 Comments || Top||

#16  I think Rumy went to Iraq to ask the murderer Sadaam "what the heck is taking soo long in killing the kurds, aren't the chemical weapons we've given you to use working effectivly!?"
Posted by: Crux || 02/12/2004 11:42 Comments || Top||

#17  I just want to know if the troll uses special
3-D glasses in order to get such a twisted view of reality or is he just sniffing gas fumes again.
Posted by: 98Zulu || 02/12/2004 11:49 Comments || Top||

#18  Crux: I think Rumy went to Iraq to ask the murderer Sadaam "what the heck is taking soo long in killing the kurds, aren't the chemical weapons we've given you to use working effectivly!?"

You mean like FDR went to Yalta to tell Stalin to kill more Soviet dissidents and Nixon went to Beijing to tell Mao to starve more Chinese peasants? The thing with the left is that when the facts do not cooperate with their thesis, they just make them up. Out of thin air. When mere lies will not do, resort to the power of imagination.
Posted by: Zhang Fei || 02/12/2004 11:53 Comments || Top||

#19  Zhang Fei, your problem is that you have a long memory. Can't you just forget about facts for awhile. It's the seriousness of the charge that matters.

Boris, what was that treaty saddam signed for?
Posted by: Lucky || 02/12/2004 12:14 Comments || Top||

#20  ...resort to the power of imagination.

or drugs.
Posted by: Rafael || 02/12/2004 12:17 Comments || Top||

#21  Anyone order Troll for breakfast?
You catch 'im, CS, and I'll fry him. I still have that recipe for napalm in the filing cabinet...
Posted by: Old Patriot || 02/12/2004 12:23 Comments || Top||

#22  Borris: I initially agreed with this war,

I think that's pure 100% bullshit. You always were anti-Bush, admit it. After 9/11, if you supported Bush going into Iraq, then it wasn't solely on the basis of the WMD. You would have understood the bigger picture involving the WoT, something leftists just can't fathom.

I too supported Bush on this war, I too feel he or his administration have no clue how to handle post-war Iraq, I too feel they screwed up on the WMD issue before the war, they have already lost a good ally (Poland)... yet I still haven't given up supporting Bush and will never say that this war for nothing.

Borris: however after hearing that all the reasons for going to war were lies

Not all the reasons were lies. If you think WMD were all the reasons then you don't know the other 95% of the story.
Posted by: Rafael || 02/12/2004 12:32 Comments || Top||

#23  #3 Borris, Please explain to me if the two people quoted here have anything to do with the current administration.

"If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program.
- President Clinton, Feb. 17, 1998

Iraq is a long way from [the USA], but what happens there matters a great deal here. For the risks that the leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons against us or our allies is the greatest security threat we face.
- Madeline Albright, Feb 18, 1998

No? Then the lies, if they are lies, were fabricated by your LLL leaders.
Posted by: GK || 02/12/2004 12:39 Comments || Top||

#24  Typical Tri-L opinions, under-researched, light on facts and heavy on cathcy phrases.
Maybe if actual logic was phrased in rhymes they might see the simple truths.
I suggest we all adopt the style of Dr. Seuss or use limericks to better communicate.
Posted by: Brainiac || 02/12/2004 12:52 Comments || Top||

#25  Hey B -- right you are! I call myself "closet-neo-con" because if I "came out" I would likely lose my job (as an untenured professor). The so-called liberals are now so illiberal it isn't even funny, while the so-called conservatives (at least neo-cons) are the greatest (only?) force for true liberalism (=liberty) in the world.
Posted by: closet neo-con || 02/12/2004 13:27 Comments || Top||

#26  Hmm… unemployed Weasel Clark employee(s) trolling today?

*runs away from a mob of weasels insulted at being compared to Clark*
Posted by: Korora || 02/12/2004 15:32 Comments || Top||

#27  "I love the smell of Napalm in the morning.... smells like... freedom!"

The left looks at things though bong-smoke colored glasses....

Isn't it strange where they make all these accusations but dont offer a shread of evidence?
Posted by: CrazyFool || 02/12/2004 16:00 Comments || Top||

#28  WMD were found, they were found in Libya who was farther along than anyone dreamed and who would not have turned over their WMD for inspections without the Iraqi war.

And in the process the US removed a brutal dictator and stopped the death of 3,000 Iraqi's a month (according to Ramsey Clark). Any whining about US dead is pathetic.
Posted by: ruprecht || 02/12/2004 17:12 Comments || Top||

#29  BUT wait... The 9/11 investigation committee is considering a subpoena for Rice and even Bush--because they are withholding records that detail what they knew before that day.

Even more... Bush's pay records (that he released in regard to his time in the Air Nat'l Guard) show that he only worked 9 days between May 1972 and May 1974....
Posted by: Anonymous || 02/12/2004 17:23 Comments || Top||

#30  Crazy Fool... trust me, you can't blame the bongs...
Posted by: Hyper || 02/12/2004 17:28 Comments || Top||

#31  Even more... Bush's pay records (that he released in regard to his time in the Air Nat'l Guard) show that he only worked 9 days between May 1972 and May 1974....

OH MY GOD!!! IT'S LIKE HE WAS IN THE NATIONAL GUARD OR SOMETHING!!!
Posted by: Robert Crawford || 02/12/2004 17:35 Comments || Top||

#32  Who in the hell taught Bushitler to fly an F-102? Did he really catch on in 9 days? Jeeezzz... Why isn't the national press on this? I mean you can't learn to fly a supersonic jet in 9 dayz! Geee! It was like he had some sort of prior training or something. Hit the Bat! Dean-O Lives!
Posted by: AntiPasto || 02/12/2004 17:53 Comments || Top||

#33  Note to Hyper: It's always the Bong. ;>
Posted by: Nuss Ratchet || 02/12/2004 17:55 Comments || Top||

#34  You know, this whole analysis of Saddam's position leading up to the war reminds me of the old joke, "There I was, sitting in the refrigerator, minding my own business..."
Posted by: Phil Fraering || 02/12/2004 19:44 Comments || Top||

#35  The editorial is by Haroon Siddiqui from the North Arab Times Toronto Star. Nuff said.
Posted by: john || 02/12/2004 21:05 Comments || Top||

#36  Ever notice you never see any pictures of Bush and Hitler together?
Oh, boy, Rob! Better jump on that one! Start Googling!
Posted by: tu3031 || 02/12/2004 22:18 Comments || Top||


Tax Relief Is Strengthening Our Economy
White House Fact Sheet on the economy. Worth reading the whole thing.

For example, if none of the President’s tax relief had been enacted, in 2004:

* 111 million Americans would pay, on average, $1,586 more in taxes;
* 81 million women would pay, on average, $1,878 more in taxes;
* 49 million married couples would pay, on average, $2,602 more in taxes;
* 43 million families with children would pay, on average, $2,090 more in taxes;
* 11 million single women with children would pay, on average, $921 more in taxes;
* 14 million elderly individuals would pay, on average, $1,883 more in taxes;
* 25 million small businesses would pay, on average, $3,001, more in taxes; and
* Nearly 5 million individuals and families who currently have no income tax liability would become subject to the income tax.
Posted by: Chuck Simmins || 02/12/2004 8:57:26 AM || Comments || Link || [336093 views] Top|| File under:

#1  If Mr. Bush and his band of thugs hadn't come into office, America would have save billions of dollars by not going to war with Iraq. I think the White House forgot to mention this in the fact sheet.
Posted by: Morris Kennedy || 02/12/2004 9:28 Comments || Top||

#2  and 25 million people in Iraq would still be slaves... and we'd have left a growing and festering problem for our children to confront... and we'd be paying about 15 billion a year to patrol the no fly zones for another few decades... and we'd not have a new wealthy (soon to be) trading partner in the world... and on and on and on
Posted by: Damn_Proud_American || 02/12/2004 9:36 Comments || Top||

#3  (Lefty)
exacto,
damn bush for his evilness!
throw those bastards back to the dogs! toss them in the shredder!
I want my pennies back!
(/Lefty)
Posted by: Dcreeper || 02/12/2004 9:45 Comments || Top||

#4  Don't the far left just make you sick.
Posted by: djohn66 || 02/12/2004 9:57 Comments || Top||

#5  Morris/Faisal/Sybil: America would have saved a few billion by not being sucker-punched on 9/11. That money lost by the airlines, the settlements paid out by the insurance companies and the government, the rebuilding costs, the loss of productivity from the victims, the relocation costs of the surviving company workers, the increased security costs, and countless other expenses are going to be paid by you and all of us--through taxes and increased costs for the foreseeable future.

Try to remember who started the *real* war. Iraq is just one campaign in a much larger war.
Posted by: Dar || 02/12/2004 13:22 Comments || Top||

#6  Count me a "thug" too. Lets take on IRan next and finish this once and for all. I rant alot don't I.
Posted by: dataman1 || 02/12/2004 15:13 Comments || Top||

#7  I only got 400 in relief but George Soros got Millions! I don't understand... Math is Hard.
Posted by: Barbie || 02/12/2004 18:07 Comments || Top||

#8  I wish they'd put a check-off on the 1040 saying contribute here to support the white man's burden.

Go Dean! 44! Hit the Bat!

Posted by: Shipman || 02/12/2004 18:09 Comments || Top||

#9  #3 I want my pennies back!
You don't get it back until you learn how to spell it correctly!!!
Posted by: GK || 02/12/2004 20:42 Comments || Top||

#10  Mr. Bush and his band of thugs

I remember them. I think they opened for X at the Rat in Kenmore Square in, I think, 1988. Damn, was I trashed that night. I think Morris was my waiter.
Posted by: tu3031 || 02/12/2004 22:24 Comments || Top||


let us tell you again what we tried to say yesterday
EFL
The first version published of yesterday’s Note included what was intended as a SATIRICAL report of a fictional ABC News/Washington Post poll. No such poll was conducted. The questions and results listed were not from a real poll. But on this day when John Kerry has a chance for wins in Tennessee and/or Virginia that just might get the Southern monkey off of his back -- and take an opponent out of the race -- and after two full news cycles in which Kerry’s transient upper hand over President Bush doesn’t seem to have been removed by the "Meet" appearance -- on this day, let us tell you again what we tried to say yesterday.

Like every other institution, the Washington and political press corps operate with a good number of biases and predilections. They include, but are not limited to, a near-universal shared sense that liberal political positions on social issues like gun control, homosexuality, abortion, and religion are the default, while more conservative positions are "conservative positions." They include a belief that government is a mechanism to solve the nation’s problems; that more taxes on corporations and the wealthy are good ways to cut the deficit and raise money for social spending and don’t have a negative affect on economic growth; and that emotional examples of suffering (provided by unions or consumer groups) are good ways to illustrate economic statistic stories. More systematically, the press believes that fluid narratives in coverage are better than static storylines; that new things are more interesting than old things; that close races are preferable to loose ones; and that incumbents are destined for dethroning, somehow.

The press, by and large, does not accept President Bush’s justifications for the Iraq war -- in any of its WMD, imminent threat, or evil-doer formulations. It does not understand how educated, sensible people could possibly be wary of multilateral institutions or friendly, sophisticated European allies. It does not accept the proposition that the Bush tax cuts helped the economy by stimulating summer spending. It remains fixated on the unemployment rate. It believes President Bush is "walking a fine line" with regards to the gay marriage issue, choosing between "tolerance" and his "right-wing base." It still has a hard time understanding how, despite the drumbeat of conservative grass-top complaints about overspending and deficits, President Bush’s base remains extremely and loyally devoted to him -- and it looks for every opportunity to find cracks in that base.

Of course, the swirling Joe Wilson and National Guard stories play right to the press’s scandal bias -- not to mention the bias towards process stories (grand juries produce ENDLESS process!). The worldview of the dominant media can be seen in every frame of video and every print word choice that is currently being produced about the presidential race. That means the President’s communications advisers have a choice: Try to change the storyline and the press’ attitude, or try to win this election without changing them. So we ask again: What’s it going to be, Ken, Karen, Mary, Terry, Nicole, and Dan?

That’s quite a headline in the Los Angeles Times: "Bush Supports Shift of Jobs Overseas." LINK

And the Washington Post story filled with quotes from Republican-leaning business people who have politically soured on the President is quite striking. LINK

As is the Wall Street Journal piece despoiling the Medicare reform law before it event takes effect.

On the strength of all the negative coverage of the President and all his own positive coverage, Sen. Kerry heads into today’s twin primaries on a roll.
Posted by: tipper || 02/12/2004 1:11:29 AM || Comments || Link || [336075 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Sounds like the "News on the half hour" doesn't it. ABC news and others in lock step are yellow. Smells of piss, cat mess, rental cleanup.
Posted by: Lucky || 02/12/2004 2:02 Comments || Top||

#2  HAHA sounds like the American sheeple have finally figured out the Republican bait and switch program
Posted by: NotMike Moore || 02/12/2004 2:30 Comments || Top||

#3  Hey, NMM, pass the bong! That must be some primo sh*t.
Posted by: Jennie Taliaferro || 02/12/2004 3:41 Comments || Top||

#4  First law of the wannabe totalitarian -- when the mass of people disagree with you, they're "sheeple".
Posted by: Robert Crawford || 02/12/2004 7:06 Comments || Top||

#5  #3. Are you accusing NMM of Bogarting? I'm surprised a nice girl like you even knows about such things.
Posted by: GK || 02/12/2004 9:29 Comments || Top||


Gen. Giap: Kerry’s Group Helped Hanoi Defeat U.S.
The North Vietnamese general in charge of the military campaign that finally drove the U.S. out of South Vietnam in 1975 credited a group led by Democratic presidential front-runner John Kerry with helping him achieve victory. In his 1985 memoir about the war, Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap wrote that if it weren’t for organizations like Kerry’s Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Hanoi would have surrendered to the U.S. - according to Fox News Channel war historian Oliver North. That’s why, he predicted on Tuesday, the Vietnam War issue "is going to blow up in Kerry’s face."
I'm not positive of that, regardless of the facts. A lot depends on the Dems' spin cycle...
"People are going to remember Gen. Giap saying if it weren’t for these guys [Kerry’s group], we would have lost," North told radio host Sean Hannity. "The Vietnam Veterans Against the War encouraged people to desert, encouraged people to mutiny - some used what they wrote to justify fragging officers," noted the former Marine lieutenant colonel, who earned two purple hearts in Vietnam. "John Kerry has blood of American soldiers on his hands," North said.
Posted by: tipper || 02/12/2004 1:04:44 AM || Comments || Link || [336076 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Yes he does have blood on his hands but so do many others, much worse some. Look, VN was badly done and we as a country have gotten beyond that. Had we gone in to win... who knows, but thanks to the grunts from that time. That said I think Kerry is a fake and this country is bigger than a fake like him.
Posted by: Lucky || 02/12/2004 1:46 Comments || Top||

#2  Yup, yup quote Oliver North who was in the basement shredding the Constitution, lying to Congress and using taxpayer dollars to pay for his security system--as if that SCUMBAG can be a credible source---LOL
Posted by: NotMike Moore || 02/12/2004 2:01 Comments || Top||

#3  Ahhh, shooting the messenger.

Are you saying there's not a book? Or that the statement wasn't in it?
Posted by: Anonymous2U || 02/12/2004 2:09 Comments || Top||

#4  Oh, yes, and where have I heard this stuff before?

Of course, IRAN.

From the revolutionaries much older and wiser now. If Carter had done.....we wouldn't have....

Hmmm, the same M.O.

Posted by: Anonymous2U || 02/12/2004 2:11 Comments || Top||

#5  Yawn. NMM farts in his own face, again. Either Giap said it in his book, or he didn't. That should be obvious enough and verifiable - assuming you can focus for 30 or 40 seconds... But you just can't help but spew the irrelevant crap, I guess.
Posted by: .com || 02/12/2004 2:16 Comments || Top||

#6  Blah Blah .com rolls off of his 15 year old Thai hooker and posts---fact is Ollie North is a criminal and a liar
Posted by: NotMike Moore || 02/12/2004 2:20 Comments || Top||

#7  Excuse me, NMM, North's actions during Iran-Contra (12 years after Vietnam, btw) have nothing to do with the content of Giap's book. It really does say what North claims and, in fact, places great emphasis on it.

North's credibility is not an issue, though you as a leftist would naturally tend to resolve all issues according to credibilty and similarly fallacious appeals to authority.
Facts and logic are inconvenient, especially to the dupes, pop-culture conformists, and academic fifth columnists who loudly take credit for our defeat in Vietnam for years on end, then deny responsibility for it when they are backed into a corner.
Posted by: Atomic Conspiracy || 02/12/2004 2:23 Comments || Top||

#8  could someone please verify that Giap actually said this. This way at least we will have definitive position.
Posted by: Igs || 02/12/2004 2:36 Comments || Top||

#9  Atomic--if someone is a congenital LIAR like Ollie North who all decent society has denied then anything he says is NOT credible
Posted by: NotMike Moore || 02/12/2004 2:41 Comments || Top||

#10  Atomic--if someone is a congenital LIAR like Ollie North who all decent society has denied then anything he says is NOT credible
Posted by: NotMike Moore || 02/12/2004 2:41 Comments || Top||

#11  Of course the Lee Atwater school of GOP politics will use this big lie against Kerry--just hope all of you liars get the tumor like he did
Posted by: NotMike Moore || 02/12/2004 2:43 Comments || Top||

#12  ROFLMAO, NMM.
A. You are not the appointed spokesman for decent society nor are you a recognized authority for designating what, if anything, constitutes such society. Ad populem, presumptive authority.
B. As I said, North's credibility does not matter, either Giap said this or he didn't (and he did). North didn't write Giap's book.
Ad hominem, red herring, strawman.
Posted by: Atomic Conspiracy || 02/12/2004 2:54 Comments || Top||

#13  NMN: the other posters here are correct on this. North isn't the issue, whatever his history. The issue is the Giap comments. If they are true, they WILL come out, if not by North then by many others.

What I believe the book does say, based on some quick research of reviews, is that Giap credits war protestors for destroying the US will to fight at the exact moment when his army's morale was at it's lowest point: 1968.

As the protests built, enemy morale only increased. Kerry was piling on by 1971, but he was certainly part of the "movement" that changed what could have been victory, into defeat.

Keep in mind that Kerry has CHOSEN to wave the "bloody shirt" and never fails to mention his Vietnam service...but that isn't all there is to his record.

He IS going to take heat, and possibly a lot of it, for what he did in 1971. He isn't running in Massachusetts this time and a lot of people are going to consider his actions FAR more seriously than any of the Bush "AWOL" (lie) stuff.

This won't go away for Kerry.
Posted by: RMcLeod || 02/12/2004 3:06 Comments || Top||

#14  umm.. Guys? You reading what you are spouting off at? Giap said Kerry helped, North is simply relaying what Giap wrote. What North is or is not, especially in NMM fevered imagination (and his talk about 15 yr old Thai hookers makes me worried) is irrelevant. You have to take out Giap, show he is a liar. Not North.
Posted by: Ben || 02/12/2004 4:41 Comments || Top||

#15  "15 year old hooker"uncalled for,but I'm not suprised you would spout such crap.

Why don't you coment on what giap said?
I have a hard time remebering any argument from you based on facts.All I ever hear from you is runny crap.You do know (I hope)the Imodian and Pepto-Bismal are taken orally?

Read a couple of novels by North,not bad.
Posted by: Raptor || 02/12/2004 6:41 Comments || Top||

#16  Saw a picture on t.v. in the gym this morning. It was of Kerry sitting behind Hanoi Jane at a protest rally either late '60s or early 70. If I was in the Bush campaign, I would be using that one in an ad over & over again.
Posted by: Jarhead || 02/12/2004 7:31 Comments || Top||

#17  I don't think Kerry can win. I hope he gets the nomination.
Posted by: B || 02/12/2004 7:39 Comments || Top||

#18  NMM is unhappy because EnduroTroll is setting new troll standards.
Posted by: Shipman || 02/12/2004 7:40 Comments || Top||

#19  I'll recant what I have said that I will not vote for Kerry because of his aid and copmfort to the enemy. I had to laugh on Fox the other Tuesday night, a statement was made that most of the Vietname Vets support Kerry. Really? What a laugh.
Posted by: dataman1 || 02/12/2004 7:47 Comments || Top||

#20  Folks,Folks, it's not NMM's fault(never is with libs). His custodian forgot his anti-spew meds again.
Posted by: GK || 02/12/2004 9:07 Comments || Top||

#21 
#8
Try this
Posted by: tipper || 02/12/2004 9:11 Comments || Top||

#22  When I saw Kerry in a photo with Hanoi Jane on the news last night, that settled any questions I had.
Posted by: Highlander || 02/12/2004 9:48 Comments || Top||

#23  Kerry lied
Soldiers died
Posted by: Anonymous || 02/12/2004 10:05 Comments || Top||

#24  THIS Vietnam (combat) veteran won't vote for Kerry, that's for sure. Neither will dozens of my friends, who are also not only Vietnam vets, but also long-term military, who understand that military service is to support and defend the Constitution, not the people currently "leading" this nation - or who were leading it before.

Unlike Kerry, I know exactly why we were fighting in Vietnam - to allow another people the same right we cherish so deeply ourselves - the right to determine the type of government we will live under. The fact that the Democratic congress of 1975 was so afraid of losing the "support" of their constituents is what lost the Vietnam war, never any military action by either the North Vietnamese or the Viet Cong. NMM's inane rants and ad-hominem attacks on North only underscore how far the Democrats have strayed from any passing consideration for our Constitution or the principles of our founding fathers.
Posted by: Old Patriot || 02/12/2004 11:58 Comments || Top||

#25  just hope all of you liars get the tumor like he did

NMM, you are one sick, vile, reprehensible son of a bitch...
Posted by: Raj || 02/12/2004 12:16 Comments || Top||

#26  This active duty serviceman won't be voting for Kerry either. I usually vote for the man vice the party & even w/Kerry's 'Nam antics aside, anyone whose voting record mirrors Ted Kennedy's is not worth voting for imo.
Posted by: Jarhead || 02/12/2004 13:23 Comments || Top||

#27  Repeating #8's statement:

could someone please verify that Giap actually said this

I know that this is a very emotional issue, but anyone out there have a translated version of Giaps book, so that we can put this issue to bed?
Posted by: Alaska Paul || 02/12/2004 13:38 Comments || Top||

#28  If this be so, then Kerry's credibility goes down the porcelain throne. Oh, wait, it was there already.
Posted by: Korora || 02/12/2004 13:48 Comments || Top||

#29  But,but,but OP,the main stream media says that all Nam vets are behind brother Kerry. Now I'm learning this is NOT true. I am absolutely shocked. CNN, ABC,etc lied?
Posted by: GK || 02/12/2004 14:25 Comments || Top||

#30  Count me in with OP. I have yet to talk to a vet, especially a Navy vet, that likes JK. If us vets were behind Kerry, GK, look for a accidental discharge where a Lt. gets hit. . . Not that I'm suggesting that of course. God help me if I ever run into Jane.
Posted by: Doc8404 || 02/12/2004 17:06 Comments || Top||

#31  From a different viewpoint of the whole thing, I'd like to add that its a refreshing change to hear the Dems saying positive things about Vietnam Veterans. A few decades late, but better late then never.
Posted by: ruprecht || 02/12/2004 17:08 Comments || Top||

#32  Doc, any significance to the 8404? Just wondering - that's the Air Force Officer Specialty Code for an Intelligence Officer...
Posted by: Old Patriot || 02/12/2004 17:28 Comments || Top||

#33  I just got off my Force Recon web, and I have yet to see a favorable review of JK. Could Drudge's news have combined with a manic swing and a lack of lithium to send NMM into a frenzy?
Posted by: Sgt.D.T. || 02/12/2004 18:31 Comments || Top||

#34  Alaska Paul, others
Giap's book, How We Won the War, is very widely available since it is a standard college text for lefty indoctrination courses on the Vietnam War.

Interestingly, Giap cites Walter Cronkite's report "Tet '68" as a crucial turning point in the war. At that time, Giap and his fellow NVA generals considered the Tet offensive to have been a bloody failure: morale was at a low ebb; their allies, the NLF (Viet Cong), had been destroyed as a fighting force; and the NV leadership was preparing to negotiate what amounted to a surrender agreement with the US. They were astonished at Cronkite's claim that VC troops has overrun the US embassy in Saigon (they got in but were quickly killed and never had control of the Embassy) along with other claims and comments that Giap regarded as extremely favorable to the Communist effort.
He and others took this as a sign of large-scale sympathy for his side among powerful forces in the US, an inspiration, at a time when his forces were all but broken.
They re-doubled their efforts, with operations geared toward exploiting public opinion and media sympathy in the US, and the rest is history.
This passage, and similar ones in other pro-Communist works, have been a major factor in my ongoing campaign against the "Hollywood/Madison Avenue Cultural Axis."
To understand not just how, but why, large segments of this most capitalistic of all industries push the socialist totalitarian agenda, read Thomas Franks' landmark cultural history, The Conquest of Cool.
This is the most important book of the last 10 years, imho.
Posted by: Atomic Conspiracy || 02/12/2004 20:48 Comments || Top||

#35  When I came home from Nam everyone I knew had something to say about my Nam experience. From good job to how could you do it (you sort of get the point)It would have been very easy for me to say ya you guys are right, I plead guilty to fighting an evil war. I didn't. I never expressed my true feelings about why I went there. I still think to this day that I did the right thing and those that protested my presence there were wrong.
Some call it naivete to support that war but I never felt that and still don't. The men who served there had different view points on this conflict. Some thought dishonoring their uniform and service to their country was the right thing to do. To those who think that fine. I wouldn't even try to understand why but I do know they lost something along the way and that was love of country. I believe Mr Kerry lost something. I am sorry for him. But having said that I will never vote for him. I think you at least need to love your country and show some honor to be president as a qualification for that office. Based on those simple assumptions Mr Kerry is unqualified to be my next president.
Posted by: dataman1 || 02/12/2004 20:52 Comments || Top||

#36  Some call it naivete to support that war but I never felt that and still don't.
Amen, Dataman. It is actually naive to support the ruthless overlords of the media/academic establishment in their demonizing mythology of the war, a mythology that represents North Vietnamese invaders as a popular uprising against imperialism, village terrorists as freedom fighters, and American media traitors as the voice of conscience. The world turned upside down during the Vietnam War and it is still not right.
Posted by: Atomic Conspiracy || 02/12/2004 21:04 Comments || Top||


Powell to Congressman: let’s tango
Under questioning by House Democrats, Secretary of State Colin Powell said Wednesday he was surprised U.N. and American inspectors did not find storehouses of hidden weapons in Iraq. But Powell told the International Relations Committee that "we presented what we believed the truth to be at the time." Powell testified that President Saddam Hussein’s apparent intent to develop and use weapons, his record of gassing his own people and his defiance of the United Nations all were — and remain — valid reasons for going to war to overthrow him.
And the violations of the cease-fire, and the pointless wars with Iran and Kuwait, and the mass graves ...
He said President Bush and he had relied on intelligence provided by CIA Director George Tenet, and the only serious question raised about the analysis since the war was whether Iraq had storehouses of weapons of mass destruction. "I don’t think anyone in America should think that President Bush cooked the books," Powell said. "The reason we told you there were stockpiles there was because we believed it to be true," Powell said. "We were surprised when they did not turn up."
The Left never once considers the obvious: if GWB & Co. were lying about WMD, why didn’t they just plant the stuff at a few locations?
But Reps. Gary Ackerman, D-N.Y., Robert Melendez, D-N.J., Rep. Robert I Wexler, D-Fla., and Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, challenged Powell about the administration’s case, suggesting it may have been misleading from the outset. "Truth is the first casualty of war," Ackerman said. "I would contend truth was murdered before a shot was fired."
"I'm repeating these clichès because they make me sound like a profound thinker. I actually know that truth wasn't the first casualty in this war — 3000 civilians in the Twin Towers were. But I'm sure the public's forgotten that by now. Didja see the Superbowl halftime show?"
"We went into this war under false premises," Melendez said. Wexler told Powell he considered him to be "the credible voice in the administration."
"Not being very bright, I continue to buy the assertion that you're the guy to go to for wimpy internationalism instead of decisive action."
"When you reached the conclusion that Iraq represented a clear and present danger to the United States, that meant a lot to me," Wexler said.
"I shall treasure it always, unless it's to my political advantage to forget it."
"But the facts suggest there was a part of the story that was not true."
No, silly, that part was incorrect. There’s a difference.
Powell fielded the assertions calmly, defending the president’s judgment and his own.
Here it comes:
But when Brown contrasted Powell’s military experience to Bush’s record with the National Guard, saying the president "may have been AWOL" from duty, Powell exploded. "First of all, Mr. Brown, I won’t dignify your comments about the president because you don’t know what you are talking about," Powell snapped.
"Lookee here, asshole..."
"I’m sorry I don’t know what you mean, Mr. Secretary," Brown replied.
Oh yes you do.
"You made reference to the president," Powell shot back. Brown then repeated his understanding that Bush may have been AWOL from guard duty.
Rat bastard.
"Mr. Brown, let’s not go there," Powell retorted. "Let’s not go there in this hearing. If you want to have a political fight on this matter, that is very controversial, and I think it is being dealt with by the White House, fine, but let’s not go there."
Donald Sensing wrote in his blog, "I just saw the video of this episode on cable news, and it was very evident that Powell was one step away from rolling his sleeves up and inviting Brown to step outside. The Congressmen retreated quick."
I would have paid to see Powell fly over that table at the Congressman.
Posted by: Steve White || 02/12/2004 12:40:32 AM || Comments || Link || [336072 views] Top|| File under:

#1  This is a Democrat tactic: repeat a lie often enough and people will start believing it, no matter what the facts are to the contrary.

Its time to sue these bastards for slander.
Posted by: OldSpook || 02/12/2004 0:53 Comments || Top||

#2  I saw this on TV, it was great. Powell looked like a Man and Mr. Brown looked like a boy! He's da general!
Posted by: CobraCommander || 02/12/2004 1:33 Comments || Top||

#3  Medved played part of it today on his show. Way to go Sec. ABC news has really been a puppet in this whole (hole) low life attempt to frame the dialogue. If GW played poker, drank Brew 102, or chased tuna during his hitch, thats good enough for me as long as he got his Honorable. If Kerry had his boxers all in a twist, hated Johnson, Nixon, don't matter. What matters is who going to win this war. Antiwar thinks the war is either a farce or not worth fighting. So far that sounds like Kerry.
Posted by: Lucky || 02/12/2004 1:34 Comments || Top||

#4  Repeat the lie Old Spook?! OK Repeat this: Iraq has weapons of mass destruction --repeat it in the State of the Union Address--send Condi out to Meet the Press to say the same thing--send Cheney out to repeat it--all lies---but wait a damn minute--the Repooplicans said it so suddenly it's not a lie
Posted by: NotMike Moore || 02/12/2004 2:16 Comments || Top||

#5  Here's something for you to repeat NMM: France, Clinton, Russia, Al Gore, the UN, Germany. What do they all have in common? They ALL believed that Iraq had WMDs. All of them, no exception.

BTW: has it struck you yet that France, not exactly our pals these days, hasn't made an issue about the "WMD lies"? Guess why? Because THEY believed the weapons were there too.

So here it is friend: either EVERYBODY lied or they were ALL fooled.

Not too, that as the investigations into intelligence roll out here and the UK, and there are several that have already reported, including the congressional one mentioned in the posting earlier today and the UK "sexed up" story, and NONE has found that there was any manipulation of intelligence. NONE.

If the Democrats are going to try and stand on this leg, they'll find that it's made of balsa.
Posted by: RMcLeod || 02/12/2004 3:25 Comments || Top||

#6  I can't wait until Frank J. gets ahold of this article. Then builds another 'In My World' story about it at IMAO! Rumsfeld is usually the Strangler there. It'll be cool to read SecDef Powell flexing his chops. And pounding a few foreheads across mahogany desk tops!... BTW, let me know when NMM says something relevant!
Posted by: Jack Deth || 02/12/2004 3:28 Comments || Top||

#7  NMM

Dont you ever get tired from repeating the same old s*** and never being able to contribute anything to a reasonable discussion?

You must be a truly small person.
Posted by: Evert Visser || 02/12/2004 4:26 Comments || Top||

#8  Once more NMM: If Bush lied, so did Clinton. So did MI6. So did French, German, Russian and Chinese intelligence. EVERYBODY was wrong about Saddam's possesion of WMDs. And quite possibly, even Saddam himself may have thought he had them.

But, the conclusion of your argument is troublesome. You complain about the war, and are saying that it was wrong to remove Saddam. Essentially what you are saying is that Saddam should still be in power, that the mass graves should still be open to his people, Qusay's plastic's shredder should still be running, and Uday should still have his "special arraignment" with jr. high school principles.

Tell me again how your side cares so much more for the little guys, the ordinary Iraqi people than Bush does? You and your side would do nothing, did nothing for 8 years. And the Iraqi people suffered.
Posted by: Ben || 02/12/2004 5:06 Comments || Top||

#9  Evert Visser - Can't you see? NMM is a BIG man. How do I know? NMM spends his entire life, running around letting everyone know how he is sooo much bigger and better and smarter than the US president and all of the other men who have achieved success. If they are smaller than him, he must be big.
Posted by: B || 02/12/2004 7:02 Comments || Top||

#10  I'd like to note that my $20 bet is still open (proceeds to Fred's tip jar). if anyone locates a quote from a senior administration official stating we have not found WMD's in Iraq.

I pointed out yesterday that in these exchanges with Powell, there are no quotes even though the reporters worked hard on the copy to make it appear that the are. Same with the GW interview.

$20 on the line for anyone who can give me a quote from the likes of GW, Powell, Rumsfeld, Cheny, Franks, etc ( must be serious source, in a position to know - ie: Scott Ritter and partisan hacks don't count. I'll be the judge of that, but I'm reasonable.).
Posted by: B || 02/12/2004 7:15 Comments || Top||

#11  come on help me out here!!....I actually need to hit Fred's tip jar as I haven't done it in a long time. With all this hype about poor intelligence and the entire DU blogging 24/7 about Bush lied/people died - are they really so foolish that not a single quote to be found????
Posted by: B || 02/12/2004 7:23 Comments || Top||

#12  Powell be Da Man.
Posted by: dataman1 || 02/12/2004 7:56 Comments || Top||

#13  Sigh...still no quote, but the good news is that after reading this article, I think I finally figured this out.

IT'S ALL ABOUT THE STOCKPILES, STUPID!!
Powell says:
"The reason we told you there were stockpiles there was because we believed it to be true," Powell said. "We were surprised when they did not turn up."

I think that what this will boil down to is "stockpiles". They expected to find "stockpiles" but they did not. Oh...they found plenty of WMD's alright, just not "stockpiles" of them. Instead what they found was small mobile labs, and lots of WMD's buried in gardens and hidden in homes.

Didn't they just find that big cyanide block in a home? I'm just guessing, but the fact that they didn't catch that this idea of individuals hiding bits and pieces in their homes/businesses is how the intelligence failed.
Posted by: B || 02/12/2004 8:17 Comments || Top||

#14  B, that's questionable. "Stockpiles" doesn't necessarily mean a huge ammo dump. The little caches of weapons in mosques, schools, and hospitals (why are there no prosecutions for these war crimes?) are "stockpiles."

It may sound like hair-splitting, but how many weapons constitute a "stockpile?" If it's "a lot," then above quote doesn't get Fred paid. If it's "more than one," I'm listening for the ka-ching.

Posted by: Jackal || 02/12/2004 8:26 Comments || Top||

#15  Jackal...hmm...that's a good point. Fact is, I don't really know what constitutes a "stockpile". But...we do know for a fact that they have already some barrels, so stockpiles must mean more than that. So, Powell's statement would be untrue if a stockpile can be considered just a couple of barrels or cyanide blocks.

Well..if no one can do better than this, I may have to hit the tip jar on a technicality. But this statement isn't exactly the same as "Sadaam did not have any wmds".

If it's true that they are just coming up dry, I think someone should be able to find something more conclusive than a hair-splitter like this.
Posted by: B || 02/12/2004 9:05 Comments || Top||

#16  perhaps a more informed rantburger could clarify this "stockpile" issue for us.
Posted by: B || 02/12/2004 9:11 Comments || Top||

#17  hey...wait just a dog gone minute here. If "stockpiles can be considered the little caches already found in mosques, schools, and hospitals...then when Colin says..."We were surprised when they did not turn up" it logically implies that he is referring to something other than that when he uses the word, "stockpiles".

Judges??
Posted by: B || 02/12/2004 9:34 Comments || Top||

#18  Well, my definition of "stockpile" would be a bunker with a cache of hundreds or thousands of rounds of artillery rounds loaded with chemical agents. A couple of barrels of, say, old mustard gas would not be a "stockpile".
It all depends on how you define something, you have to look behind the words. Like when the police say they found a "arsenal" including a "thousand rounds" of ammunition. The average person thinks "Oh my god!". A shooter thinks "What, they found a couple of bricks of .22 ammo? Big deal."
Posted by: Steve || 02/12/2004 9:54 Comments || Top||

#19  Ah ha! Thanks Steve!! My bet still stands!
Posted by: B || 02/12/2004 10:00 Comments || Top||

#20  I'd give a weeks pay to see someone clock Chuck Schumer. I can't stand that guy.
Posted by: Lil Dhimmi || 02/12/2004 11:14 Comments || Top||


Home Front: WoT
Feds: Soldier Tried to Give Info to Al Qaeda
Hot off the AP wire:
A National Guardsman stationed at Fort Lewis was arrested Thursday and charged by the Army with trying to provide information to the Al Qaeda terrorist network, a federal law enforcement official confirmed. [The accused] is a tank crew member from the National Guard’s 81st Armor Brigade, a 4,000-member unit set to depart for Iraq for a one-year deployment.
As Mr. Drudge likes to say, developing . . . .
Posted by: Mike || 02/12/2004 5:52:18 PM || Comments || Link || [336097 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Dare I ask his name? Perhaps he can blame it on "citizen" Michael Moore. It will be interesting to see what his motives were.
Posted by: dataman1 || 02/12/2004 18:08 Comments || Top||

#2  The BBC is reporting he is a muslim convert.
Posted by: phil_b || 02/12/2004 20:25 Comments || Top||

#3  Reuters ID's him as "Army Spc. Ryan Anderson, a tank crewman"
From HeraldNet dated 2/7/2004
"Spc. Ryan Anderson will participate in the mobilization of the 81st Armor Brigade, which has not been mobilized since World War II.
...3,500 Washington National Guard soldiers ... will be going to Iraq for at least a year.
Anderson is a military historian, graduating from WSU in 2002 with a degree in military history with an emphasis on the Middle East. Converting to the Muslim faith five years ago, he said the tour of duty will be an interesting experience." His tour of duty is already more interesting that he could have imagined.
Posted by: Tresho || 02/12/2004 23:23 Comments || Top||


German deported after threatening to kill President Bush
A German man who used a public library computer to e-mail death threats against President Bush has been deported. An immigration judge decided last month that the conviction of Volker Czechanowsky demonstrated he had engaged in terrorist activities. An indictment charged he used a Broward County library computer to send an e-mail to the Miami FBI office, saying, ``I will kill the president by 5/30/03; catch me if you can; long live Saddam.’’ The message was sent last May 6. Czechanowsky, 37, was placed on probation under a plea agreement last October but was jailed while facing deportation. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency said he was flown home Wednesday. ``This represents the final step in our efforts to remove an individual who has flagrantly abused our country’s laws and freedoms,’’ said Jesus Torres, ICE chief in Miami. Czechanowsky is a German citizen and had been a legal U.S. resident. Noncitizens face deportation after felony convictions.
Posted by: TS || 02/12/2004 5:08:18 PM || Comments || Link || [336075 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Ah. The "peace" movement.
Posted by: Robert Crawford || 02/12/2004 17:25 Comments || Top||

#2  Volker Czechanowsky
Good Cherman namen.
Posted by: Shipman || 02/12/2004 17:32 Comments || Top||

#3  Hope we never cross paths... he might not remember his name for a while.
Posted by: True German Ally || 02/12/2004 17:50 Comments || Top||

#4  Shipman, there are only four Czechanowsky's in the German telephone directory three in Essen and one in Munich. F**ker, er Volker.
Posted by: GK || 02/12/2004 18:04 Comments || Top||


WTF - Only 1 plant? Asshat Reporter also gives its location to terrorists
EFL
I’m blown away that we only have 1 plant - Piss Poor Planning

LAKE CITY, Mo. — At the Army ammunition plant here, there’s no shortage of bullets. Since the war with Iraq this year, the plant — the United States’ only remaining military small-arms facility — has hired an extra 1,000 workers to manufacture an additional 3 million rounds each day. But for the first time, the output is not enough. So, for the first time in decades, the U.S. military is going elsewhere — like Illinois and Israel — for ammo supplies. The pressure is still on the Lake City plant, however, to play a key role in the battle strategy in the war on terror.
Posted by: Yosemite Sam || 02/12/2004 10:06:07 AM || Comments || Link || [336069 views] Top|| File under:

#1  It's that Peace Dividend coming back to bite us.
Posted by: Steve || 02/12/2004 10:16 Comments || Top||

#2  The many bans on all sorts of weapons by states and the Federal government restricts the market for this caliber ammunition. If we could buy rifles that used these calibers, there would be more plants making them.
Posted by: Chuck Simmins || 02/12/2004 10:28 Comments || Top||

#3  I had saw a report on this on Fox last night, and was shocked to discover this. Makes me wonder how many ammo manufacturers are actually left in this country. I also wonder if that glut of surplus ammo that was on the market some years back hurt our manufacturers.
Posted by: Lil Dhimmi || 02/12/2004 10:58 Comments || Top||

#4  Well, someone's not to bright if we do only have one plant. Although, it may not have been necessary before, someone should have stepped forward and pointed out this glaring mistake. Unless, of course, the factory had been located inside NORAD.
Posted by: 98Zulu || 02/12/2004 11:32 Comments || Top||

#5  Duh...is someone thinking? Ammuntion...explosives...fire...one factory...incredible.....
Posted by: dataman1 || 02/12/2004 11:39 Comments || Top||

#6  This is an example of "economical" military planning, i.e. planning that is based only on lowering near-term costs. When this dumb decision was made [5-10 years ago], you can bet that the current shortage scenario was brought up and promptly dismissed. The worst thing is that nobody who made this stupid decision will pay for it - they probably retired years ago!
Posted by: OldFan || 02/12/2004 12:03 Comments || Top||

#7  I'm sure a few of the manufacturers of sports and hunting ammo can gear up to manufacture miltiary rounds readily enough, if the Government offers them a contract for it. As for Israeli ammo, I know it's good - just look at the results. I'd be a bit more worried if we were buying ammo from Russia or Western Europe. I think the Illinois plant belongs to Remington, and can easily convert part of its facilities to manufacturing small-caliber military ammo. The big crunch is probably in larger, multi-milimeter-size rounds for Bradleys, some of our choppers, etc.
Posted by: Old Patriot || 02/12/2004 12:07 Comments || Top||

#8  yes, the decision to consolidate to one supplier was made during the Clinton administration IIRC

And no, sports/hunting ammo companies can't gear up unless they change their manufacturing a bunch: for environmental reasons the US military is constrained NOT to use lead in military ammo. Right now it's tungsten, I think (am writing in a hurry at lunch ...).

Moreover, even if we waived that rule, since tungsten bullets shoot differently from lead ones, it would take a whole lot of retraining before our troops would be able to use the reasonably well.

Sigh.
Posted by: rkb || 02/12/2004 12:35 Comments || Top||

#9  Actually there is only one GOVERNMENT owned plant left. There are several private ammo suppliers, winchester and IMI come immediately to mind. And yes they are being offered contracts, but this was all caused by a logistics screw up in the military that it learned from the business world called "just in time" delivery. Namely the military has basically gotten rid of its stockpiles of ammo and other weapons and even other logistically important supplies thinking they could get it from other suppliers. This thinking made for some really tight situations in Iraq, we made it through, but it was a close thing as far as logistics go.
Posted by: Valentine || 02/12/2004 12:49 Comments || Top||

#10  Valentine, yes there are private ammo suppliers but, with the exception of the Israelis, they were not (and most are not) set up to work with tungsten bullets in their cartridges rather than lead. Tungsten is harder to machine, so at a minimum the bullet component of the cartridge would probably need to be made outside these factories.

And, as I mentioned above, the point of impact of, say, a 9mm or 5.2mm cartridge with tungsten bullet is different from the point of impact of a cartridge of the same calibre and load but with a lead bullet. So buying commercial rounds would not be of much use to the military.

This story is old ... it was reported a few weeks ago ... and contracts have already been let to the Israelis and I think one other factory to supplement production at the MO plant. Part of the problem is that as reserves and national guard are called up, a lot of people have to re-qualify with weapons. That can chew up a lot of ammo and drew down stockpiles significantly.
Posted by: rkb || 02/12/2004 14:27 Comments || Top||

#11  In other news, a convoy of SUVs carrying swarthy, middle-eastern looking men and their dumpy kaffiyeh-clad coed girlfriends was seen heading for Lake City from a non-Christian non-Jewish House of Superstition Worship near Dearborn Michigan.
A spokesman for CAIR denied the report and dismissed it as "racial profiling."
Posted by: Atomic Conspiracy || 02/12/2004 21:22 Comments || Top||


Colin & Brown, sitting in a tree.....
Seems there’s more to the story, via Lucianne:
...Powell was recalling for the panel his review of the prewar intelligence. "I went and lived at the CIA for about four days to make sure that nothing was," he began, then he paused and glared at a staffer seated behind the members of Congress. "Are you shaking your head for something, young man, back there?" Powell asked. "Are you part of these proceedings?"
(Uh, who, ME??? No, Mr. Secretary, it’s just a nervous tick, I work for Congressman Brown. Does State have an opening????"
Powell’s unusual remarks threatened to derail the hearing. Rep. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, a 12-year veteran of the House, objected, "Mr. Chairman, I’ve never heard a witness reprimand a staff person in the middle of a question."
(The esteemed Congressman should get out more and walk amongst the little people, become one of them.)
Powell shot back, "I seldom come to a meeting where I am talking to a congressman and I have people aligned behind you giving editorial comment by head shakes."
There’s the problem, Powell thought he was at a meeting, Brown was at a tribunal.
Posted by: Anonymous2U || 02/12/2004 10:02:01 AM || Comments || Link || [336088 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Powell seems to have had a little Rummy rub off on him. Excellent!
Posted by: Steve || 02/12/2004 11:37 Comments || Top||

#2  Damn! Why doesn't he come across like this more often? I'm glad State hasn't sapped all the vim and vigor from the man just yet. I'd like to see him on the ticket one way or another in '08!
Posted by: Dar || 02/12/2004 13:02 Comments || Top||

#3  Dar,

He'd better start. Powell was the representative making the case at the UN.
Posted by: Daniel King || 02/12/2004 14:05 Comments || Top||

#4  Note the poker player at work.

Shows up Sunday on with Russert and is almost universally panned for his inarticulate poor performance. Media raise the stakes on AWOL.

Rummy shows up Monday at a Pentagon briefing and rocks the reporters. Then Powell rolls into Congress and cuts new ones for Dem Reps. Press are handed NG dental records. Hold or Fold?

Wanna play another hand?

Posted by: john || 02/12/2004 21:22 Comments || Top||

#5  Yeah, and according to Drudge, lots of viewers on Sunday.
Posted by: Anonymous2U || 02/12/2004 21:46 Comments || Top||


Guantanamo inmate set for transfer
Seven Spanish policemen have flown to Guantanamo Bay to escort home a Spanish national detained there. Spanish authorities have alleged that Abderrahman Ahmad - captured in Afghanistan in 2001 - is a member of a Spanish al-Qaeda cell. US Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Wednesday that Mr Ahmad’s repatriation would be the first in a series of prisoner transfers. Mr Ahmad, 29, is from Spain’s North African enclave of Ceuta. He is one of four Guantanamo inmates to be charged by Spanish High Court Judge Baltasar Garzon with having links to an al-Qaeda cell in Spain discovered in November 2001. Mr Ahmad is expected to appear before Judge Garzon for questioning on Friday evening. The Spanish government has said it will seek the extradition of the other three men.
So long, Ahmad. Hope you enjoy the Spanish Inquisition.
Posted by: Steve || 02/12/2004 9:06:32 AM || Comments || Link || [336098 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!

Sorry, I couldn't help myself
Posted by: N Guard || 02/12/2004 9:47 Comments || Top||

#2  Making room for more???
Posted by: Anonymous2U || 02/12/2004 21:14 Comments || Top||

#3  i think we have plenty of room, gitmo is the tip of the iceberg. the boogey man used to sway the dogs.
Posted by: Dan || 02/12/2004 23:21 Comments || Top||


Grand old policy
A scholar argues that Bush’s doctrine of preemption has deep roots in American history

EVERY PRESIDENT makes foreign policy. Only a select few, over the sweep of history, design what scholars term grand strategy. Grand strategy is the blueprint from which policy follows. It envisions a country’s mission, defines its interests, and sets its priorities. Part of grand strategy’s grandeur lies in its durability: A single grand strategy can shape decades, even centuries, of policy.

Who, then, have been the great grand strategists among American statesmen? According to a slim forthcoming volume by John Lewis Gaddis, the Yale historian whom many describe as the dean of Cold War studies and one of the nation’s most eminent diplomatic historians, they are John Quincy Adams, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and George W. Bush. Gaddis knows the latter name may bring a number of his colleagues up short. Critics charge that President Bush is a lightweight, Gaddis laments, and they do so because the president is a generalist who prefers the big picture to its details. Over lunch at Mory’s, Yale’s tweedy private dining club, Gaddis suggests that academics underrate Bush because they overvalue specialized knowledge. In reality, as his new book asserts, after Sept. 11, 2001, Bush underwent "one of the most surprising transformations of an underrated national leader since Prince Hal became Henry V."

The Bush doctrine is more serious and sophisticated than its critics acknowledge -- but it is also less novel, Gaddis maintains. Three of its core principles -- preemptive war, unilateralism, and American hegemony -- actually hark back to the early 19th century, to the time of John Quincy Adams. . .
Click on the link to read the rest
Posted by: tipper || 02/12/2004 3:53:07 AM || Comments || Link || [336071 views] Top|| File under:

#1  I agree that academic specialists despise generalists. I think that the Internet is bringing back an age of the generalist. Steven Den Beste is good example.
Posted by: phil_b || 02/12/2004 5:24 Comments || Top||

#2  That's because Professors - the self-designated priests of our generation - don't have any leadership skills, nor do they need them. Thus they have no clue what makes a good leader.
Posted by: B || 02/12/2004 7:58 Comments || Top||

#3  The biggest problem with academics is that most of them are leftists, whose main belief is that they are superior to everyone else. Thus, since George Bush isn't a leftist, he's not one of them, therefore he's stupid. It's the pinnacle of hypocracy and stupidity for the leftist academics to believe this, but that's their philosophy regarding George Bush in a nutshell.
Posted by: Old Patriot || 02/12/2004 12:31 Comments || Top||


House probe clears administration of manipulating intelligence
The House intelligence committee’s ongoing review of prewar intelligence has turned up no evidence that senior Bush administration officials distorted facts to strengthen the case for invading Iraq. Rep. Porter J. Goss, Florida Republican and chairman of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, told reporters yesterday there is "absolutely no evidence that the intelligence was manipulated, distorted or in any way shaped or morphed to suit a preordained purpose."

Mr. Goss’ committee is one of several panels conducting inquiries into the prewar intelligence, which the Bush administration used to back up assertions that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and posed an immediate threat to the United States. Mr. Goss, speaking with reporters at the Capitol said "the most pressing question" raised by House Republicans has been why prewar intelligence regarding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq "wasn’t more on the mark. The answer, I think, probably is because we didn’t have enough dots on the table for the analysts to draw a clear enough picture for our policy-makers." During the mid-1990s, he said, the United States was focused on domestic issues and the link between the intelligence community and the White House was considerably less than it has been since September 11. "No only did we not invest in intelligence, we willfully disinvested in intelligence," Mr. Goss said. "We cut back the number of capabilities that we had on a global basis very dramatically." Mr. Goss, a former CIA case officer, said intelligence agents "have to do business with some very distasteful people."

"You have to get next to them to get information," he said, adding that without people who have close access to the plans and intentions of the troublemakers "the chances of stopping something like a 9/11 are very difficult."
Posted by: Dan Darling || 02/12/2004 12:59:04 AM || Comments || Link || [336068 views] Top|| File under:

#1  You knew they would. Here's the left's spin on the same story from AP. GOP says Iraq intelligence failure caused by Clinton budget cuts . That's their straw man to be knocked down. Nothing in the article about no evidence that senior Bush administration officials distorted facts to strengthen the case for invading Iraq.


Posted by: GK || 02/12/2004 6:43 Comments || Top||

#2  not to waste band width or anything - but, for Fred's sake I'll post this challenge here too...

I'd like to note that my $20 bet is still open (proceeds to Fred's tip jar). if anyone locates a quote from a senior administration official stating we have not found WMD's in Iraq.

I pointed out yesterday that in these exchanges with Powell, there are no quotes even though the reporters worked hard on the copy to make it appear that the are. Same with the GW interview.

$20 on the line for anyone who can give me a quote from the likes of GW, Powell, Rumsfeld, Cheny, Franks, etc ( must be serious source, in a position to know - ie: Scott Ritter and partisan hacks don't count. I'll be the judge of that, but I'm reasonable.).
Posted by: B || 02/12/2004 7:29 Comments || Top||


US traces routes of terror network in Brooklyn
A prominent Yemeni sheik came to Brooklyn in 1999, raised money at mosques that was ostensibly for charity and then went to Italy, where he met with a top operative of Al Qaeda, according to federal prosecutors in Brooklyn. The sheik, Abdullah Satar, then made a speech in Italy calling upon people to join the jihad and denounced the United States for pursuing a terrorism suspect "to curry favor with the Jewish population and to project hatred upon Muslims,’’ according to testimony of an F.B.I. agent at a trial of a New Jersey man in Federal District Court in Brooklyn that began on Tuesday. Prosecutors say the man, Numan Maflahi, was an associate of Sheik Satar’s. The trial, on a charge of making false statements to federal agents, is peeling back the secrecy surrounding a wide-ranging investigation of what prosecutors have described as a network with shadowy roots in Brooklyn that raises and transfers money for terrorists. The sheik who raised the money was identified as a member of Yemen’s parliament. There are no known charges against him.
My guess is that he’s from the al-Islah Party.
That's prob'ly the easiest call you've made this week...
Testimony in the case showed that investigators believed Sheik Satar may have operated much the way prosecutors said another Yemeni cleric did in Brooklyn. The other cleric, Sheik Mohammed Ali Hassan al-Moayad, was arrested in Germany last year and is being held in Brooklyn awaiting trial on federal charges that he funneled millions of dollars to Al Qaeda. The charges against Sheik Moayad made international news when they were announced by Attorney General John Ashcroft last year. But until the trial now under way in Brooklyn, there had been no public mention by prosecutors of the alleged involvement of a second prominent Yemeni in Brooklyn fund-raising.

Federal prosecutors say Mr. Maflahi, 30, a gas station owner who lives in Little Ferry, N.J., was Sheik Satar’s personal assistant and driver during the 1999 trip. The prosecutors say Mr. Maflahi, originally from Yemen, made false statements to the F.B.I. in 2003 when he was asked about a fund-raising trip by Sheik Satar. The allegations in Mr. Maflahi’s case and details that emerged from the testimony showed that federal investigators have found connections they had not revealed publicly among the handful of cases arising from their terrorism-financing investigation.

Yesterday and on Tuesday, an F.B.I. antiterrorism agent described Sheik Satar’s visit to Brooklyn. The agent, Brian Murphy, said the sheik was under surveillance by federal agents as he made a series of visits to Brooklyn mosques with Mr. Maflahi. The connection between the sheik’s fund-raising and terrorism financing in New York was merely implied. But the agent described to the jurors the sheik’s trip to Italy after he left Brooklyn and met with people identified as terrorists. Outside of the jury’s hearing, the prosecutor, Kelly A. Moore, told the judge, Nina Gershon, that one man the sheik visited after he left the United States was "the No. 1 operative for Al Qaeda in Italy.’’
Bad sheikh! No cookie!
Mr. Maflahi’s lawyer, Hassen Ibn Abdellah of Elizabeth, N.J., has argued that Mr. Maflahi did not make false statements, and he has repeatedly complained to the judge and the jury that the prosecution has tossed around references to terrorism to inflame the jurors. "They’re using a lot of inflammatory words,’’ Mr. Abdellah said outside of court. "But this case is not a terrorism case.’’

The deputy chief of Yemen’s mission in Washington, Yahya Alshawkani, said in an interview yesterday that he had heard of Sheik Satar but knew little of him and did not know how he could be reached. He said he knew nothing about any prosecution claims that the sheik might have been involved in terrorism financing. Prosecutors say that in one interview with federal agents last year, Mr. Maflahi provided false information about his role during the 1999 trip, saying that his interaction was limited to seeing the sheik by chance and giving him occasional car rides. Mr. Murphy said that during the interviews, Mr. Maflahi described the sheik as an eminent Yemeni with "a reputation comparable to Hillary Clinton or Chuck Schumer,’’ the senators from New York. Mr. Murphy also testified that information from Sheik Moayad’s telephone book led to people in Brooklyn who had been investigated in the inquiry.
Posted by: Dan Darling || 02/12/2004 12:06:33 AM || Comments || Link || [336089 views] Top|| File under:

#1 
... Mr. Maflahi, 30, a gas station owner ...

I'd like to know Mr. Maflahi's legal status for living and working here in our country.
Posted by: Mike Sylwester || 02/12/2004 0:20 Comments || Top||

#2  ...reputation comparable to Hillary Clinton or Chuck Schumer...

I dunno about you, but I sure wouldnt want my rep compared to dishonest scum like Whitewater/Stocktrader Hillary and totalitarianist Gun-Ban Chuckie Schumer.
Posted by: OldSpook || 02/12/2004 0:59 Comments || Top||

#3  I dunno Old Spook but I wouldn't want my prez to be an AWOL Texas National Guard Liar that stole an election because his daddy's cronys on the Supreme Court selected him
Posted by: NotMike Moore || 02/12/2004 2:04 Comments || Top||

#4  And of course we're all safer thanks to an AG who handles snakes and drinks poison and speaks in tongues
Posted by: NotMike Moore || 02/12/2004 2:06 Comments || Top||

#5  Yeah NMN and we'll be much better off with a guy who called his brothers in uniform rapists and war criminals. While they were still in the field, no less. What a great American.
Posted by: RMcLeod || 02/12/2004 3:28 Comments || Top||

#6  Ah, so the Left is back to picking on John Ashcroft's deep personal Christianity again...hmmmm.
NMM, Faisal, Antiwar, whoever you are, wouldn't you be happier posting your LLL crap at DUH.com (Democrat Underground) than here?
Posted by: Jennie Taliaferro || 02/12/2004 3:38 Comments || Top||

#7  Hey NMM do you actually bother to read the posts on rantburg and the other blogs or newsites at all? You and the rest of the lefties "Bush was AWOL" theory has been so shot to ribbons I got to wonder if you guys are drinking pure LSD at this point to keep up that line.
Posted by: Valentine || 02/12/2004 6:21 Comments || Top||

#8  The AWOL lie is now a religious issue with the left; they'll no more give that up than they'll give up the Rosenbergs' innocence.
Posted by: Robert Crawford || 02/12/2004 7:09 Comments || Top||

#9  Man oh Man, with Dean gone and Kerry's war credentials swirling down the shitter, lefties are reading the writing on the wall. It's gonna be an ANGRY BITTER LIE SPEWING 4-1/2 years for them, and I'll enjoy every second of it. Mike Moores next book is about 9/11 and Bush. SHOCKER!
Posted by: Nonnymus || 02/12/2004 8:29 Comments || Top||

#10  I think we all need to take a minute and step back from our bashing of NotMikeMoore(but just as fat and stupid). He/she/it is obviously a very mentally challenged person. Can any of us really imagine the sheer level of self-delusion and denial of reality it takes to maintain these Lefty Lies? It's unfathomable! I conjecture that idiots such as NMM and the real fat man Mike Moore all live within a localized Reality Disjunction.

I can already hear the screams and indignation when Geoge W Bush is elected, by a huge margin, for his second term. The LLL's will probably implode. Hopefully breaking the effect of the Reality Disjunction.
Posted by: AllahHateMe || 02/12/2004 9:36 Comments || Top||

#11  "#3 I dunno Old Spook but I wouldn't want my prez to be an AWOL Texas National Guard Liar"

That's a lie.

" that stole an election because his daddy's cronys on the Supreme Court selected him"

That's a lie.

Ummm, you just made two blatant lies with only 2 statements... that makes you a bit of a hypocrite doesn't it?
Posted by: Damn_Proud_American || 02/12/2004 9:39 Comments || Top||

#12  I'm beginning to wonder if "NMM" isn't really Mike Moore, using this idiotic moniker as an attempt to hide himself, while still grabbing all the 'glory' he can get.

The two spew the same Democratic talking pointslies.

The two illustrate a comparable mental deficiency.

The two seem to provide support (moral? emotional? theosophical?) for one another, either through specific quotes or referrences.

I'd also expect them to look similar, if not alike, and they both exhibit the same inexhaustive capacity for self-deception.

Either one or both (the same?) take up space and consume resources that would better be used by their intellectual superior - a six-month old house cat.
Posted by: Old Patriot || 02/12/2004 13:22 Comments || Top||

#13  I'd kill for my baby cat, don't compare Yog to slime balls.
Posted by: AntiPasto || 02/12/2004 16:38 Comments || Top||

#14  Op, mikenotnot does use the slobs style and I was thinking the samething. Anyway, he hasn't said anything today that makes any points, to bad as some quality content would be fun. I don't think it's in him.
Posted by: Lucky || 02/12/2004 23:28 Comments || Top||


International-UN-NGOs
Question about the IAEA - where are the critics?
This isn’t an article but a question I have. Where are the critics on the UN’s IAEA? I have’t heard anything about their abysmal failure to prevent nuclear info from spreading (via Pakistan) to the black market. Isn’t that what their job is? Why hasn’t anyone pointed this out? It is a PERFECT example why the UN is not the save-all that so many on the left claim it is. Why hasn’t the Right effectively brought this to everyones attention?
Posted by: Yosemite Sam || 02/12/2004 2:07:50 PM || Comments || Link || [336095 views] Top|| File under:

#1  It's the UN enough said :)
Posted by: djohn66 || 02/12/2004 15:32 Comments || Top||

#2  Because the Right (at least the portion of it made up of me) considers the IAEA to be a worthless example of bureaucratic masturbation that may very well be involved in covering up the weapons trade instead of investigating it. It's not really worth criticizing a group of the corrupt for not finding crimes.
Posted by: Robert Crawford || 02/12/2004 17:30 Comments || Top||

#3  Why criticize. Those with open eyes no the IAEA to be unrepentent in their incompetance. Those with closed eyes don't see the problem.
Posted by: mhw || 02/12/2004 17:50 Comments || Top||

#4  IAEA can rightfully be faulted for being rooked on the pre-Gulf War Iraq program, Iran's program, Libya's program and North Korea's uranium program.

But not for anything happening in Pakistan--Pakistan was never an NPT member and so was not under IAEA monitoring.

The IAEA is a lousy cop, but Pakistan wasn't in their jurisdiction.
Posted by: john bragg || 02/13/2004 8:47 Comments || Top||


Southeast Asia
Malaysia: "We Ain’t Arresting Tahir"
Mostly "We’re innocent, blah, blah. Edited for Tahir info:
Malaysia’s leader on Thursday questioned U.S. intelligence on this country’s role in a global nuclear trafficking network, and said the man President Bush called its "chief financial officer and money launderer" would not be arrested, for now.
Or later, he knows too much.
"He is on his feet and free to move around," Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said of B.S.A. Tahir, allegedly a middleman who helped Pakistan’s top nuclear scientist sell equipment and know-how to Iran, Libya and North Korea.
He won’t dare leave Malaysia for fear of being grabbed.
"There is no such thing as Malaysia’s involvement," Abdullah told reporters Thursday, when asked to respond to the remarks Bush made in a speech. "We are not involved in any way. I don’t know where Bush is getting his evidence from."
"Lies, all lies!"
Tahir, a Sri Lankan based in the Persian Gulf emirate of Dubai, operated a computer company to order centrifuge components from a Malaysian factory - using designs from Pakistan - Bush said. Other parts came from Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, he said. "Tahir acted as both the network’s chief financial officer and money launderer," Bush said. "He was also its shipping agent, using his computer firm as cover for the movement of centrifuge parts to various clients." The Malaysian company, Scomi Precision Engineering, says it supplied 14 semifinished machine components, ordered by Tahir, to Dubai. It says it understood the parts were for use in the oil and gas industry.
The actual order was placed by a British company in Dubai called Gulf Technical Industries (GTI). Tahir apparently sold them their computers and serviced them. He would have been in a perfect position to install a backdoor and use GTI’s computers to place the order without their knowledge.
Malaysian police have been investigating Tahir, who is married to the daughter of a former Malaysian diplomat, said a senior official.
Ah, no wonder he hasn’t been picked up, it’s another family affair.
"Malaysian police have spoken to him and asked him a lot of questions," Abdullah said.
"So, you still related to you-know-who?"
"Yup"
"Ok, that’ll be all. Nice talking to you, Mr. tahir."

Police say they’re not detaining Tahir because he has apparently broken no local laws. Malaysia has ratified the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, but it is unclear whether its laws allow criminal prosecution for nuclear parts trafficking.
Minor loophole
Posted by: Steve || 02/12/2004 1:22:20 PM || Comments || Link || [336078 views] Top|| File under:

#1  More info: Washington, Feb. 10. (PTI): A Sri Lankan businessman with close connections to Malaysia's business elite, is emerging as a central figure in an international investigation into a clandestine network that sold Pakistani nuclear technology to Libya, Iran and North Korea, a media report said. Bukary Syed Abu Tahir was said to be a key operative for Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, who last week confessed to illicitly selling nuclear expertise and hardware to third countries and named Tahir as an associate in the effort, The Wall Street Journal said in a report from Kuala Lumpur.
The officials and acquaintances say Tahir and Khan have been friends for years, often travelling together on business. Tahir operates a computer supply and trading business known as SBM Group from his headquarters in Dubai. Among his close friends in Kuala Lumpur is Kamaluddin Abdullah, son of Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, the report said.


Kamaluddin is part owner of the centrifuge factory.
Posted by: Steve || 02/12/2004 13:29 Comments || Top||

#2  I guess another country just became a member of the Nuclear Targeting list.
Posted by: djohn66 || 02/12/2004 15:31 Comments || Top||

#3  Time for someone to get a birthday present - preferably a small, very poisonous snake slipped through the mail slot or into an open window. I'm sure the CIA can arrange for such an "accident".
Posted by: Old Patriot || 02/12/2004 19:11 Comments || Top||


Indonesian court jails man for hiding Bali bomber
An Indonesian man was sentenced to six years in jail on Thursday for hiding one of the bombers responsible for the blasts that ripped through two Bali nightclubs in October 2002, killing 202 people, a foreign news agency reported.
They’re still convicting people, excellent.
Hafidin, also known as Munawar, was found guilty of hiding the convicted Bali bombing mastermind, Imam Samudra, who was sentenced to death for his role in the attacks on the Indonesian holiday island. Most of the victims were foreign tourists. ’The defendant has been proven legally and convincingly guilty of carrying out a terror act by hiding the bomber of the Bali bombings, Imam Samudra,’ presiding judge Nurul Hasanah told the district court in Denpasar. ’We are therefore sentencing the defendant to six years in jail.’
Guess the Indonesian’s are serious. Still need to watch and see if they stay in the jug.
Posted by: Steve || 02/12/2004 9:19:17 AM || Comments || Link || [336075 views] Top|| File under:

#1  I think they are really serious . . .

Hafiddin becomes the 32nd person to be convicted over the Bali bombings. Other militants have received sentences ranging from three years to death. See link
Posted by: cingold || 02/12/2004 18:53 Comments || Top||


NPA sez US better stay out of their turf
Communist guerrillas threatened Wednesday to attack American troops participating in annual war exercises in the Philippines later this month if they stray into rebel zones. About 2,500 U.S. Marines and 2,300 Filipino soldiers will take part in major combat and live-fire maneuvers from Feb. 23 to March 4. The exercises, involving 46 American assault and transport aircraft, will bring U.S. troops near security hotspots, including Dinglayan Bay off Aurora, a mountainous province 110 kilometers (70 miles) north of Manila, where New People’s Army guerrillas are active.

The Philippine exercise director, Brig. Gen. Rafael Romero, said there is a plan for a beach landing exercise in Dingalan Bay. The area has been adequately secured, he said. The annual exercises, launched under a 1951 defense treaty to prepare the longtime military allies for joint combat, are aimed at dealing with external threats but would also involve antiterrorism scenarios, Romero said. Military officials said the exercises are not part of any counter-insurgency operation and will not include a specific imaginary target. However, communist rebel spokesman Gregorio Rosal said the exercise in Aurora, where the guerrillas maintain a major front, could be a cover for a clandestine surveillance or anti-insurgency operation. He said the rebels will attack American or Filipino soldiers if they stray into their lairs or provoke them. "We will try to avoid trouble but we will be prepared,’’ Rosal said. "Anybody who would make provocative acts would be a target of tactical offensives.’’

A leftist group, the New Nationalist Alliance, said holding the exercises near an NPA stronghold was an act of government insincerity and a blow to peace talks that opened Tuesday between government and rebel negotiators in Norway. The group accused Washington of projecting its power in Asia by deploying U.S. troops in the Philippines, which has become "America’s doormat in the region.’’ The alliance said another venue of the exercises, western Palawan province, is crucial to U.S. interests because it is near the Spratlys, a South China Sea region contested by China, the Philippines and four other Asian nations. President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, a staunch U.S. ally, said the exercises had nothing to do with the dispute over the Spratly islands, and stressed that military alliance with Washington "is not aimed at any nation or foe.’’
Posted by: Dan Darling || 02/12/2004 12:50:00 AM || Comments || Link || [336068 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Training or dis-information,hope they decide it's time to clean house.
Posted by: Raptor || 02/12/2004 8:17 Comments || Top||

#2  It would be the height of stupidity for this group to attack US forces, especially military forces engaged in a "live-fire" exercise. We could just extend the exercise area a bit farther, expand it into a combined-arms exercise, and speed the training of Philippines Marines, army, and air force personnel in combined-arms counter-guerilla operations in a very satisfying manner - for OUR side, anyway.
Posted by: Old Patriot || 02/12/2004 15:22 Comments || Top||


Malaysia gives Thailand a JI member for Valentine’s Day
Thailand asked neighbouring Malaysia on Wednesday for a St. Valentine’s Day gift - the militant suspected of masterminding violence in its largely Muslim south. Bangkok urged Kuala Lumpur to step up its hunt for Masae Useng - wanted on charges of treason, murder, arson and robbery and believed to be hiding in neighbouring Malaysia, Deputy Prime Minister Chavalit Yongchaiyudh told reporters. ``We’ve requested Masae Useng as a Valentine’s Day gift,’’ Chavalit said. ``I believe Malaysia is our friend and they will send him to us on the 14th.’’
Does he perhaps know something? Or is he just hoping?
The government has been seeking Useng since gunmen stole more than 100 assault rifles, most of them M-16s, and killed four soldiers on January 4 at an army base in the south, where militants fought a low-key separatist war in the 1970s and 1980s. Thai officials say they believe Useng planned the raid and some senior security officials say he might have links to Jemaah Islamiyah, the shadowy Islamic Southeast Asian network thought to be connected to al Qaeda and responsible for the Bali bombings in 2002.
Posted by: Dan Darling || 02/12/2004 12:14:22 AM || Comments || Link || [336066 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Will he be wrapped in red ribbons and have a 'I love U' balloon tied to his ear?

(Would like to see that on the 6'oclock news......)
Posted by: CrazyFool || 02/12/2004 9:35 Comments || Top||


Syria-Lebanon-Iran
"US out to harm Pak-Iran brotherly ties"
According to Iran’s State News Agency (IRNA) a noted Pakistani analyst and former chief justice of the Supreme Court Syed Sajjad Ali Shah said the United States was heading with a conspiracy to spoil brotherly relations between the peoples of Iran and Pakistan.
Didn’t ya just know that it was going to be the US fault?
Ali Shah, who is chairman of Iran-Pakistan Friendship Association, told IRNA in an interview that both countries should be fully aware of designs aimed at creating mistrust between the two nations. His main focus during the interview was the situation, arising out of reports of nuclear proliferation by some Pakistani nuclear scientists and the US policy thereof. Referring to the US conspiracy, he said that America was employing various tactics to fulfill its evil designs,
Insert a picture of evil US here, planning it’s diabolical schemes
including dissemination of rumors by its media about Iran`s disclosure about the alleged assistance it received from Pak scientists. Certain circles have alleged that Tehran had given names of some Pakistani scientists to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), who had been reportedly involved in nuclear proliferation. Reports also indicated that recent debriefing of some Pak nuclear scientists was done in the light of IAEA information.
Wasn’t us
And, because of that top Pakistani nuclear scientist Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan had to appear on the state-run television last Wednesday to seek apology, taking responsibility for nuclear proliferation. However, acting President of Muttahida Majlis-e Amal and President of Jamaat-e Islami Qazi Hussain Ahmed had said, a day before that during his telephonic talk with Dr. Khan, the founder of Pakistan`s atomic program had denied his involvement in nuclear proliferation.
Well, he would, wouldn’t he?
I've no idea. You're assuming the call actually took place, of course...
Shah quoted Iranian authorities as stating that their nuclear program was indigenous, and what they had passed on to IAEA was about few business brokers, with no mention of Pakistan or its nuclear scientists. The IPFA chief pointed out that it was a matter of serious ponder why America welcomed Dr. Khan`s televised confession, while Iran had outrightly rejected the reports that it had given any information on this count to IAEA. This all happened amid propaganda in section of the press here over Iran`s role in unearthing alleged nuclear leakage`s abroad.
EH?
This is a Pak "expert" speaking. Don't expect coherence...
Some elements are averse to growing Iran-Pak relations, especially strong ties among the public, Ali Shah maintained. He stated that taking advantage of Pakistanis` sensitivities over their nuclear assets, same elements have attempted to create resentment in Pakistanis for their Iranian brothers because they have high esteem and regard for Iran`s culture and the Islamic Revolution.
Paks to Black Hats
"we’re coming to get you, dobbers"

The other important aspect of the conspiracy, he added, is that Washington was after Pakistan`s nuclear program, as it never wanted to see a nuclear power among the Islamic nations. The local press this week said that America had information about the alleged activities of some nuclear scientists long before and Pakistan was provided with some information and proofs. In this connection, the press referred to a chain of visits by top US military commanders and high-level State Department officials during the last year or so. Ali Shah demanded of Tehran and Islamabad to be mindful of the plots and skillfully guard against them.
Did he just say that? Surely he couldn’t mean hide the evidence?
Posted by: tipper || 02/12/2004 6:26:41 PM || Comments || Link || [336089 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Well I could be wrong but I believe that Islmabad and Tehran are targets for some of our ICBM's now. I would also be really concerned about pre-emptive strikes (probably conventional)in the future when we find out with certainty their nuclear arsenal size.
Posted by: dataman1 || 02/12/2004 21:36 Comments || Top||

#2 
US out to harm Pak-Iran brotherly ties
One would certainly hope so!
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut || 02/12/2004 23:45 Comments || Top||


Iranians encounters with US soldiers fuel favorable sentiments
On Revolution Day, the Iranian equivalent of the Fourth of July, Azadi Street was again transformed from east-west artery to carnival midway. Men lined up for free yogurt. Hawkers coaxed women to finger the material on baby clothes. Children clamored for a turn throwing darts at George W. Bush’s caricature. Hossein Asadi put three darts right between the eyes of the caricature, sketched on a pair of boards mounted in a sideshow tent. He walked away with a new yellow tennis ball but no change in his feelings, which were nothing if not admiring. "They like me to hit George Bush, so I hit George Bush," said Hossein, 15. "They say it’s the great Satan, but I say it’s a great country."

Wednesday marked 25 years since an elderly Muslim cleric with eyes the color of coal declared Iran a theocracy. But while religious figures remain firmly in charge, sweeping aside an entire reform movement last week with the stroke of a pen, another pillar of the revolution appears shakier. Anti-Americanism is not what it used to be in Iran. As the United States and Iran edge warily toward possible rapprochement, the Iranian public makes no secret of its appetite for restoring relations formally severed in 1980 after militant students took over the U.S. Embassy. In recent months, Iranians say, the appetite has grown for an unexpected reason: Iranian pilgrims returning from Iraq are spreading admiring stories of their encounters with American troops. Thousands of Iranians have visited the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala since the war ended. Many have expressed surprise at the respectful and helpful behavior of the U.S. soldiers they met on the way. Leila Araki, waiting in the back of a car as her husband peddled shoes, said her mother-in-law somehow lost her money on the road to Karbala. She said a U.S. soldier reached into his pocket and handed her taxi fare back to Najaf. "This is something quite contrary to what we have been told about Americans," said Araki, 31, who was told of Americans flashing a thumbs-up and saying, "'Good, Iranians.' They were really surprised. I would never be this respected and well-treated even in my country, by my countrymen."

This unusual cultural exchange has emerged at a fortuitous time, according to analysts and ordinary Iranians. After a quarter-century of mutual hostility, the U.S. and Iranian governments are working quietly to establish order both in Afghanistan and Iraq, neighboring countries that Iran considered hostile under the regimes that the United States and allied nations toppled. The prospect of formal relations remains uncertain. Senior Iranian officials said they do not expect serious progress until after the U.S. presidential election and Iran’s own contest for a new president in 2005.
Posted by: TS || 02/12/2004 6:21:10 PM || Comments || Link || [336084 views] Top|| File under:


Iran failed to declare centrifuge designs
Iran failed to declare highly sensitive designs for uranium enrichment centrifuges to the UN nuclear watchdog, calling into question the Islamic republic’s cooperation with the agency, diplomats said on Thursday. Several Western diplomats told Reuters on condition of anonymity that information from Libya and other countries had led to the discovery of the designs, which could be used to develop machines to produce weapons-grade material. Western diplomats on the IAEA board have said that Iran does not volunteer information and is often slow in answering questions the IAEA inspectors ask it.
Posted by: Dan Darling || 02/12/2004 9:13:10 AM || Comments || Link || [336070 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Western diplomats on the IAEA board have said that Iran does not volunteer information and is often slow in answering questions the IAEA inspectors ask it.

And so have concluded that Iran should be given more time to answer the questions.
Posted by: Robert Crawford || 02/12/2004 17:42 Comments || Top||


Israel-Palestine
Japan should take lead role in peace process: Palestinians
Japan should be admitted into the so-called Quartet of nations and organizations sponsoring the stalled Mideast peace process, the Palestinian foreign minister said Thursday. Nabil Shaath, who is in Tokyo for talks with Japanese officials, said he appreciated Japan’s financial contributions to the Palestinians over the years, but felt it was time for Tokyo to take a larger role in resolving the conflict. "Japan has the trust of all Palestinians and also, I think, the Israelis," Shaath told reporters. "We think it’s unfair to ask Japan just to pay the bill without being part of the decision-making." Shaath suggested that Japanese monitors could be posted in Palestinian territories as a means of contributing.
Ohoh. Setting up some more targets for Hamas, are we? Can't lure the Merkins into that position, so we'll try the Japanese...
Shaath was joined by Palestinian Finance Minister Salam Fayad. The Palestinian delegation met with Foreign Ministry officials Thursday, and a meeting with Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi was scheduled for Friday. The Palestinians are also looking for more financial help from the Japanese. Japan has contributed $650 million to the Palestinians over the past decade, though annual donations have dropped in recent years, Shaath said.
Along with everyone else's, it would seem. Maybe they don't like seeing their money go down the toilet with no progress at all being made?
Posted by: TS || 02/12/2004 8:36:49 PM || Comments || Link || [336089 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Donor fatigue perhaps? I'm sure the Japanese are thrilled with the offer to get sucked further into the most tangled and sorid conflict on the planet.
Posted by: Tokyo Taro || 02/12/2004 20:55 Comments || Top||

#2  "stalled" peace process ? HAR HAR. It's moving along nicely, now known as The Wall. Good luck, chumps; it's been fun.
Posted by: Anonymous || 02/12/2004 21:21 Comments || Top||

#3  The Palestinians are also looking for more financial help from the Japanese.

Well, no shit!
Yeah, looks like the Europeans are finally catching on. Let's try to work the Asian suckers market and see what happens.
Posted by: tu3031 || 02/12/2004 22:53 Comments || Top||


Iraq-Jordan
Inside Iraq: The Untold Stories
Through the network news, the public watches stories of the attacks in Iraq, but those reports don’t tell the whole story. Local (Local being Oregon) filmmaker Mike Shiley has been in Iraq and teamed up with KATU reporter Elaine Murphy, for a series of stories that you won’t see in the headlines.
This is a six part story, scroll to the end of Part 1 for links to all six parts. The photos in each part are really good.
Posted by: TS || 02/12/2004 7:44:20 PM || Comments || Link || [336066 views] Top|| File under:


Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi Letter
Full translated text of the al-Zarqawi letter has been posted on the CPA website. Interesting reading.
Posted by: Steve || 02/12/2004 3:15:36 PM || Comments || Link || [336070 views] Top|| File under:

#1  The last paragraph is interesting. Sounds like there have been some power struggles inside al'Qaeda, and Zarqwan is trying to establish his bonafides.
Posted by: Robert Crawford || 02/12/2004 15:17 Comments || Top||


Israel-Palestine
Can bags of pig fat deter suicide bombers?
Jerusalem - Israeli police have come up with plans to place bags of pig lard on buses in a bid to deter Palestinian militants from carrying out suicide attacks, the Maariv daily reported on Thursday.

Rabbinical authorities have given the idea its approval on the grounds that it could be a life-saving measure even though pigs are also considered impure by Jews.

Authorities believe that the move could discourage Palestinians from carrying out attacks as pieces of their exploded body could come into contact with the pig fat, prejudicing their chances of entering into paradise.

The paper said that the rabbinical dispensation could mean that security forces also hang bags of lard in shopping malls and schools.
Posted by: Yosemite Sam || 02/12/2004 12:36:35 PM || Comments || Link || [336080 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Hey, Sam ... this is a duplicate of another entry today.

Not a big deal, but we've been having a lot of duplicates lately. It would help if everyone scanned the current entries before posting ....
Posted by: anon || 02/12/2004 12:51 Comments || Top||

#2  Only some crazy religious 7th century masochist would fall for this - - they may be on to something that might finally work! let the dogs be denied thier virgins!
Posted by: Dan || 02/12/2004 12:53 Comments || Top||

#3  This may be old news. It is "rumored" that shortly after a terroist raid by Muslim rebels, Gen Pershing who was in command of the Phillipines at the time, rounded up 50 suspected rebels and lined them up against the wall. He then had the troops dip their bullets in pig fat and proceed to shoot 49 of the terrorists and cover them in the mass grave with the entrails and skins of the slaughtered pigs. Lucky number 50 was allowed to go home and report. We went almost 50 years there with out attacks by them on our assets afterwards. Seems the old methods never fail.
Posted by: TopMac || 02/12/2004 13:39 Comments || Top||

#4  Those Jews. You either love them or hate them...What a great idea!
Posted by: dataman1 || 02/12/2004 13:57 Comments || Top||

#5  Sounds like a good idea till you get to the detail... how ya gonna get Mike Moore into a bus?
Posted by: Shipman || 02/12/2004 14:09 Comments || Top||

#6  Shipman: Piece of cake - literally, a piece of cake ought to do the trick.
Posted by: BH || 02/12/2004 14:37 Comments || Top||

#7  Make that pork fat rather than pig fat and you eliminate the problem I'm sure.
Posted by: Michael || 02/12/2004 15:21 Comments || Top||

#8  BH: I was sitting in a meeting scanning this rant. When I read your post, I laughed out loud. Thanks for getting me fired ;o)
Posted by: PlanetDan || 02/12/2004 15:36 Comments || Top||

#9  LOL BH... the obvious usually escapes me.
Posted by: Shipman || 02/12/2004 16:49 Comments || Top||

#10  Emeril was right! Pork fat DOES rule!
Posted by: eLarson || 02/12/2004 20:23 Comments || Top||


Afghanistan/South Asia
Raid Arrests Moroccan, Pakistani for Suspected Al-Qaida Links
Paramilitary troops and intelligence agents raided a home in a tribal village near the Afghan border Thursday and arrested two al-Qaida suspects - a Moroccan and his Pakistani host. About 100 troops took part in the operation in Mir Khankhel village in Jamrud, an intelligence official said. The area, dominated by Afridi tribesmen, is about 15 miles northwest of the regional capital of Peshawar. The suspects were Abdur Rahman, 35, from Morocco, and Adnan Khan Afridi, a local tribesman believed to have sheltered the other al-Qaida suspect. It was believed to have been the first such operation in Jamrud, which is on the road to Torkham, the main border crossing between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
It’s a start.
Posted by: Steve || 02/12/2004 11:48:30 AM || Comments || Link || [336068 views] Top|| File under:


Musharraf admits Pakistan being used for Afghanistan attacks
Damm, that meter does work:
Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf admitted on Thursday that some anti-government activity in Afghanistan was being carried out from over the border in Pakistan but said Islamabad was taking steps to stop it. "Certainly everything (within Afghanistan) is not happening from Pakistan, but certainly something is happening from Pakistan," Musharraf said in an address at the National Defence College in Islamabad.
Well, that nails it down.
"Let us not bluff ourselves. Now whatever is happening from Pakistan must be stopped and that is what we are trying to do," he said, without elaborating.
"Mr President, can you define what "whatever" means?"
"Er, you know, stuff."
"And what do you plan to do to stop it?"
"Something."

Kabul has frequently complained that anti government rebels use Pakistani tribal territory across the border as a sanctuary and springboard for launching attacks inside Afghanistan. Afghanistan’s south and southeast regions bordering Pakistan have seen frequent attacks against US-led coalition forces, government soldiers and officials as well as international aid workers in the recent past.
Whatever.
Posted by: Steve || 02/12/2004 11:27:37 AM || Comments || Link || [336108 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Does anyone know what percentage of soldiers and officers in the Pakistani military are Pashtun? I have been told that they dominate it, and that, as a result, Pakistan will never do anything serious in the NW Frontier Province.
Posted by: closet neo-con || 02/12/2004 12:17 Comments || Top||

#2  The Pakistani army is dominated by Punjabis. The Pashtuns make up the next largest portion of the army.
Posted by: Paul Moloney || 02/12/2004 21:39 Comments || Top||


Iraq-Jordan
101st Airborne Division Soldier Receives Silver Star
A 101st Airborne Division soldier who, despite being critically wounded himself, repeatedly exposed himself to enemy fire to treat wounded comrades in Iraq received the Silver Star here Feb. 5. Pvt. Dwayne Turner, a combat medic assigned to Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 3rd Battalion, 502nd Infantry Regiment, provided life-saving medical care to 16 fellow soldiers April 13 when his unit came under a grenade and small-arms attack 30 miles south of Baghdad. Turner and two other medics from Company A of that battalion were part of a work detail that came under attack as they unloaded supplies in a makeshift operations center. "I moved to (my vehicle) just before the first grenade came over the wall," Turner said. "The blast threw me even further into the vehicle, and I took on some shrapnel." Ignoring his own injuries, Turner ran to the front of his vehicle and saw a soldier with eye injuries. "I checked him out, and tried to get him into a building," Turner said. The other two medics established a triage system under the cover of a building while Turner ran back outside to bring more soldiers into the makeshift clinic. "I just started assessing the situation, seeing who was hurt, giving them first aid and pulling them into safety," he said, downplaying his actions on that day.

Turner, his legs wounded by shrapnel in the initial attack, was shot at least twice while giving first aid to the soldiers. "I didn’t realize I was shot," he said. "A couple of times, I heard bullets going by, but I thought they were just kicking up rocks on me." At one point during the attack, one of Turner’s fellow medics told him he was bleeding. "Someone told me, ’Doc Turner, Doc Turner, you’re bleeding.’" he said. "I looked down at my leg and saw I was bleeding, and kind of said, ’Oh hell, if I’m not dead yet, I guess I’m not dying.’"

"I don’t think he realized how much blood he lost," said Sgt. Neil Mulvaney, from the same unit as Turner. "After I got the first patient inside the building, I sort of slumped down in the corner," Turner said. "I didn’t think there was any way we were going to get out of there, and it would have been really easy to just stay in that corner. "Then I heard (the wounded) calling for medics," he continued, "and I realized I could let them continue to get hurt -- and possibly die -- and not come home to their families, or I could do something about it." Turner chose to do something about it. He continued to give first aid and to bring soldiers in from the barrage of gunfire outside the compound until he finally collapsed against a wall from loss of blood. A bullet had broken his right arm. He had been shot in the left leg. Shrapnel had torn into both of his legs.

The Silver Star is awarded for gallantry in combat, but Turner does not see himself as a hero. "Nobody gets left behind," he said emphatically. "We were the medical personnel on hand. You’re not relieved from your duty until someone comes. No one else was going to get the job done, so we did." Although Turner downplays his heroism, the Army believes that at least two of the 16 soldiers he treated would have died had he not been there. "He risked his life for 16 other men without noticing his own injuries - that’s heroism in my book," Mulvaney said.

"I was just doing my job," Turner insisted. "As far as the values of the Army, it’s not to ’earn’ a Silver Star; it’s to uphold what you signed on for. Other people may see me as a hero; I see myself as doing my job. No one is going to die on my watch." Turner’s Silver Star is the highest award given to any 101st soldier during Operation Iraqi Freedom thus far. He received the Purple Heart in July.
Posted by: Chuck Simmins || 02/12/2004 10:47:36 AM || Comments || Link || [336070 views] Top|| File under:

#1  What an outstanding young man. Bravo!
Posted by: Steve White || 02/12/2004 10:51 Comments || Top||

#2  More American excellence. Well done, Pvt. Turner.

Slightly off topic, but funny (from NRO's The Corner):

THAT'S ONE WAY TO PUT IT [Jonah Goldberg]
From a reader:
Remember at the end of Band of Brother when Capt Winters quoted himself by saying he was "no hero, but served in the company of heroes". Kerry seems to come from the perspective of "I was a hero, and I served in the company of rapists, murderers and drug addicts". Bryan C. Washington, DC
Posted by: Tibor || 02/12/2004 11:15 Comments || Top||

#3  OUTSTANDING!
Posted by: Jack Deth || 02/12/2004 11:35 Comments || Top||

#4  Outstanding!
Another US soldier that wont have to pay for his beers when i am around.
Posted by: Evert Visser || 02/12/2004 11:36 Comments || Top||

#5  Tibor--LOL! Good contrast! A true leader like MAJOR Winters gives credit to his men. Kerry isn't worthy of standing in his shadow (nor am I, for that matter!).
Posted by: Dar || 02/12/2004 13:00 Comments || Top||

#6  Bravery like this always amazes me. This is what heroes are made of.
Posted by: Rafael || 02/12/2004 13:02 Comments || Top||

#7  Didn't Kerry get his for rushing into a 'hooch' where there was a wounded VC to 'dispatch' him and take his rocket launcher after they had pounded it [the hooch] with about 50 rounds from a twin .50 gun?

Pvt Turner is a real hero.
Posted by: CrazyFool || 02/12/2004 13:43 Comments || Top||

#8  Two of the names on the Vietnam Memorial are people I knew, and who died trying to help others. John was a medic I met in Vietnam - I didn't know his last name until years later. Mike Day was a friend before Vietnam, and was a paramedic, killed when he and his helicopter were shot down going to rescue the crew of another downed chopper.

ALL combat medics are heros in my book. These guys differ from your everyday paramedic the same way an EOD NCO differs from a cub scout. Pvt Turner (and his comrades) is a true member of a unique breed, and deserves all the recognition he's received, and more.
Posted by: Old Patriot || 02/12/2004 13:48 Comments || Top||

#9  All I know when i here stories like this.It makes me proud to be an American
Posted by: djohn66 || 02/12/2004 15:24 Comments || Top||

#10  God I am so proud of these brave young Americans. God Bless America!
Posted by: dataman1 || 02/12/2004 17:10 Comments || Top||

#11  Good stuff. Good post. Bravo Zulu Pvt Turner.
Posted by: Jarhead || 02/12/2004 20:33 Comments || Top||


Gen Abizaid Not Hurt in Attack, Press Disappointed
Insurgents launched a brazen attack Thursday on an Iraqi civil defense outpost visited by Gen. John Abizaid, commander of all U.S. forces in the Middle East. Abizaid and his party escaped injury in the gun battle. Just moments after a convoy carrying Abizaid and his party pulled inside the cinderblock walls at the headquarters of the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps in this city west of Baghdad, an explosion rang out. Seconds later, two more explosions were heard near the rear of the compound, and U.S. soldiers responded with a barrage of rifle and machine gun fire.
"Shit, this would happen on my shift. They nail the boss, I’ll never make MSgt. Git em!"
Several attackers fired three rocket-propelled grenades, and another pelted the party with small arms fire from a nearby mosque. The gun battle lasted about six minutes.
Mosque huh? What a surprise.
No U.S. soldiers and no one in Abizaid’s party were injured.
That’s good.
Abizaid was accompanied by Maj. Gen. Charles Swannack, commander of the 82nd Airborne Division. After the gun battle, Abizaid and Swannack canceled plans to walk into the city and instead returned to a U.S. military base near here. The timing of the attack raised questions about the possibility of a breach in security surrounding the general’s trip.
Mahmoud the Rat didn’t have enough time to get anyone with a big car bomb, just a few gunnies. Or they were watching from the mosque, waiting for a target.
It was not immediately clear whether the attackers were killed in the exchange. After Abizaid left in a convoy of Humvee utility vehicles, soldiers of the 82nd Airborne’s 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment asked members of the Iraqi security force to clear the mosque. But they refused.
Oh, really? And are they still members of the force?
Abizaid appeared unfazed. Speaking in Arabic to one member of the Iraqi security force after the gunfight, the general asked about the attack and was told, "This is Fallujah. What do you expect."
Later, after he returned to the U.S. base, Abizaid told a reporter, "This is an area where there are plenty of former regime elements out there, willing to fight."
About time to clean out this armpit.
Posted by: Steve || 02/12/2004 10:14:27 AM || Comments || Link || [336127 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Welcome to the party Johnny A.
Posted by: Yosemite Sam || 02/12/2004 10:34 Comments || Top||

#2  After Abizaid left in a convoy of Humvee utility vehicles, soldiers of the 82nd Airborne’s 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment asked members of the Iraqi security force to clear the mosque. But they refused.

It's pretty clear that the reason attacks are still occurring is because Iraqi security forces are not all equally motivated. The way to solve this problem is to withdraw from the cities to desert bases, leaving anti-Coalition elements to target primarily Iraqi units. The survival instincts of the Iraqi security forces should then ensure that they take tough action against their attackers. Whether they do it with finesse or their old ham-handed ways is not our problem.
Posted by: Zhang Fei || 02/12/2004 10:48 Comments || Top||

#3  Obviously, security was breached in a major way. They knew exactly where a U.S. four-star general was going to visit, and when he was going to be there, and they knew it in advance. Who spilled the beans? I can't imagine they'd trust the Iraqi cops with such information, but then again I know how the government runs things.
Posted by: gromky || 02/12/2004 13:21 Comments || Top||

#4  If the Iraqi forces refused to deal with enemy forces in the mosque, our forces needed to clean out the mosque. The building lost its religious value when one side misused it as a position to attack.
Posted by: Alaska Paul || 02/12/2004 13:51 Comments || Top||

#5  We cannot win this war being "nice guys". It's time to make an example of a few places, beginning with Fallujah. Also, we need to find that Iraqi and hang him. He's not earning his pay - he's a fraud.

I also think it's time to start targeting mosques where gunfire originates, and any mullah that objects gets hung from the minaret WITHOUT a face rag.
Posted by: Old Patriot || 02/12/2004 13:52 Comments || Top||

#6  I saw this in another rant today but perhaps the pig lard/fat idea could be used in this situation somehow. I'll leave it up to fellow Rantburgers on the course of that action, but I wouldn't be above dumping a ton around the mosque.
Posted by: dataman1 || 02/12/2004 18:17 Comments || Top||

#7  Zhang, that day is fast approaching. It will be Fort Apache soon.
Posted by: Lucky || 02/12/2004 23:45 Comments || Top||


Israel-Palestine
Arafat funding terror with EU aid
The German daily Die Welt reports that the European Commission’s Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) has concluded that tens of millions of dollars in humanitarian aid, donated by the EU to the PA has been utilized for terrorist operations against Israel.
Surprise! surprise!
The findings, which have deliberately been covered up, confirm Israeli allegations that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat has diverted millions of dollars in EU funding to the Fatah Tanzim and Hamas terrorist organizations.
This has been pointed out in posts here on Rantburg, in the last few weeks
The OLAF findings are based upon documents recovered from the PA headquarters by Israeli military forces during the course of Operation Defensive Shield. OLAF agents recently visited Jerusalem to be briefed by Israeli security officials and to ascertain the authenticity of the documents. The OLAF investigators have accepted that the captured documents are genuine and evidence of Arafat’s wide-spread diversion of the EU’s humanitarian aid to Palestinian terrorist operations that targeted Israeli civilians. The Israeli documents had been presented to the EU’s Commissioner for External Affairs Chris Patten last year. Patten, however, refused to recognize their authenticity and denied they established that Arafat was using EU funds for terror attacks. Under increasing pressure from European parliament members, Patten was forced to order an OLAF investigation into the Israeli allegations.
Patten's credibility drops a bit further, not that it's got much further room to drop...
The documents include letters signed by Arafat ordering payments to eleven terrorist leaders for what he termed guerilla operations. In addition, there are receipts for the payments of the mortgages of the families of Hamas suicide bombers, as well as a cash awards of several thousand dollars to the family members. Other documents detail how European funds were used by the PA’s Preventative Security Forces to stage "spontaneous" demonstrations in support of imprisoned Fatah Tanzim Marwan Barghouti, who was placed on trial in Israel for masterminding terror attacks that killed 26 Israelis.
Things like that happen when you dump loads of money into Paleostine with no controls, not even a receipt...
Following the signing of the Oslo Accords, the EU pledged to provide funding to the PA for civilian projects, primarily to pay the salaries of the PA’s municipal workers. The EU donates approximately $10 million a month and more than $1.5 billion to the PA since 1994. The plaintiffs allege that the EU failed to undertake any steps to monitor or scrutinize how the PA was utilizing the donated money.
That's what I said...
OLAF has not denied the veracity of the report. It denied having been pressured to keep the results of the investigation under wraps, saying that it had not been published because it was still incomplete. It also complained that the article was based on confidential "in camera" briefings that had been leaked.
And how's that different from keeping it "under wraps"?
In May 2002 Shurat HaDin, a non-profit Israeli Law Center filed a NIS 100,000,000 civil action against the EU on behalf of the Blumberg family in the Tel Aviv District Court. According to the suit, on August 5, 2001, Palestinian police officers moonlighting as Fatah-Tanzim terrorists opened fire from another vehicle at the Blumberg’s car, killing 35 year old Tehiya Blumberg, a mother of five children pregnant at the time of the attack. Her husband Steve and their daughter Zipporah were severely injured. The Blumberg law suit, which is brought by attorney Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, alleges that the EU recklessly provided the PA with massive sums of financial aid, while knowing that the money was being diverted from its intended civilian purposes to Palestinian terrorist groups. The court papers assert that the EU was repeatedly warned by Israel that its aid was financing Palestinian attacks on Israelis. The OLAF report should be immediately released to the public and the EU’s aid to the PA suspended for good," said Shurat HaDin Director Darshan-Leitner. "Without the EU’s reckless provision of financing to the Palestinians, hundreds of Israeli terror victims would still be alive and thousands of others would never have had to suffer their tragic injuries", Darshan-Leitner said. "European taxpayers must now acknowledge that they are the ones who have been financing the Palestinian terror attacks and accept that they must pay compensation to the families of the victims", added Darshan-Leitner.
Posted by: tipper || 02/12/2004 9:32:55 AM || Comments || Link || [336093 views] Top|| File under:

#1  This is the O-fficial beginning of the end for Arafat. Die Welt is a major Euro newspaper; when the Euro reporters decide to go after you, it's a sign that elk season is open. This is going to make a lot of Euros uncomfortable.
Posted by: Steve White || 02/12/2004 10:06 Comments || Top||

#2  Patten, however, refused to recognize their authenticity and denied they established that Arafat was using EU funds for terror attacks

Chris Patten doesn't even bother to create a facade of evenhandedness. His disdain for Israel is apparent. Even more disturbing, though, is that because of his inaction, the blood of innocents is on his hand -- innocent Israelis who were killed by terrorists and innocent paleos who were used as human shields in Israel's retaliatory efforts. Shame on him. He should be singled out for his responsibility in this tragedy.
Posted by: PlanetDan || 02/12/2004 10:14 Comments || Top||

#3  Uncomfortable? About keeping up appearances,I guess.I don't think anyone really cares.
Posted by: El Id || 02/12/2004 10:48 Comments || Top||

#4  Don't expect this to make any difference. Anti-Semitism is alive and well at the top of European Society, especially in the civil service and among elected officials. This, just as the report on rising anti-Semitism in Europe, will be promptly ignored, and things will go on as normal until there's a major boom in Europe, aimed at all political leaders (rather than just singling out the "opposition").

I think Israel should start bulldozing everything in the Gaza and West Bank, push the "fence" back to the Jordanian and Egyptian borders, and frog-march the "palestinians" to and across that border at bayonet-point. Then we'll have "peace" in the Middle East, until the next terrorist attack.
Posted by: Old Patriot || 02/12/2004 11:47 Comments || Top||

#5  Well, if the report is official and believeable, the EU will be liable in civil suits to the tune of millions (maybe billions) from victims of suicide attacks (about a half dozen Americans have died in such attacks).

As Fred would say, - sympathy meter not registering for the poor EU
Posted by: mhw || 02/12/2004 13:36 Comments || Top||

#6  Saw a picture of Suha today. She's getting kinda chunky. Could it be the guilt or those good Paris restaurants?
Posted by: tu3031 || 02/12/2004 22:55 Comments || Top||


Police plan piggish counter-terrorism psychological warfare
No comment, out of my league
The police are considering using bags of lard in buses and other places to deter Moslem suicide bombers. The police are going to begin implementing their plan to hang bags of swine fat in buses and other public places, in the hope it will deter suicide bombers from entering them. The suggestion is based on the fact that Islam, like Judaism, regards the pig as an unclean animal. Strict Moslem tradition holds that any Moslem who touches a pig before dying will be denied access to heaven. The main way of recruiting suicide bombers, many of whom are religiously observant Moslems, is the assurance that as martyrs (shahids) their place in paradise is guaranteed, assuring them seventy willing virgins will be at their beck and call, according to Moslem tradition.

The police thought of using pigs or pork products to ward off terrorism months ago, but needed a rabbinical permit to carry it out, so as not to offend Jewish sensibilities. Rabbi Eliezer Moshe Fisher, of the Jerusalem Rabbinical Court, ruled on Wednesday that “there is no halachic ban on using bags of lard in buses and other places” when saving lives is concerned. The halachic permit says bags of lard may be used in any place that might be a target for suicide bombings, such as schools, shopping malls, railway stations etc. The rabbi also said that if the police do not use pig fat in buses, tens of thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews will arm themselves with spray guns filled with liquid lard, which they will spray on terrorists whenever the need arises. Deputy Defense Minister MK Ya’akov Edri came out in support of the new idea. If bags of pig lard will prevent zealous Moslem terrorists from carrying out attacks, I’m all for it”, he said.
Posted by: tipper || 02/12/2004 9:21:22 AM || Comments || Link || [336068 views] Top|| File under:

#1  That is ridiculous. Some f*cked up turban will just issue a fatwah that says suiciding yourself (which is already against islam) and killing jooos supercedes touching a pig.
Posted by: AllahHateMe || 02/12/2004 10:11 Comments || Top||

#2  Islam is a fantasy religion...I think this is a great idea. While AHM's criticism may be true, it demonstrates the humanity of the Israelis in exhausting all options before resorting to deadly force in defending themselves. A trait which I find admirable, but ultimately (against Arabs) self-defeating.
Posted by: mjh || 02/12/2004 10:17 Comments || Top||

#3  Strict Moslem tradition holds that any Moslem who touches a pig before dying will be denied access to heaven.

Now there will be debates on whether the Islamokaze is technically dead before his shredded flesh mingles with that of the pig. Still, I like the whole "hang a clove of garlic" aspect of this. It really highlights Islam's status as a cult of evil.
Posted by: BH || 02/12/2004 10:33 Comments || Top||

#4  What would be really fun to see is if Israel announced that the next time one of these retards attacks them, they will fill a crop-duster with pig blood and lard and spray it over Gaza. Gross, but humane. Well, except for that whole "getting into heaven" thing.
Posted by: BH || 02/12/2004 10:38 Comments || Top||

#5  I think it's brilliant. Simple yet effective.
Posted by: B || 02/12/2004 10:41 Comments || Top||

#6  I wonder if it would be feasible on sorties to have bacon bits dropped on targets just before the bomb hits.
Posted by: Lil Dhimmi || 02/12/2004 11:04 Comments || Top||

#7  Then have the Jews create and mass produce "Lucky Charms" that "protect" the heathens against the lard and turn a buck to help finance Israeli defenses. Of course they'll need a front company...hmmm how about Allah Industries?
Posted by: 98Zulu || 02/12/2004 12:04 Comments || Top||

#8  tens of thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews will arm themselves with spray guns filled with liquid lard, which they will spray on terrorists whenever the need arises.

The image this conjures up is astonishing.....

Maybe we should arm our men in Iraq with lard squirt guns.....
Posted by: CrazyFool || 02/12/2004 13:12 Comments || Top||

#9  Classic, this idea.
Posted by: Korora || 02/12/2004 13:23 Comments || Top||

#10  Bad idea to hang bags of fat in buses.

Pig fat really really smells bad when it decomposes.

On the other hand spraying pig fat on the PA side of the security fence seems a promising idea.
Posted by: mhw || 02/12/2004 13:39 Comments || Top||

#11  In the spirit of the article:

Here's a little song about four wet pigs
Here's a little song about four wet pigs
Two of 'em little and two of 'em big
They danced all night at the Pigtown Jig

The two that were little were just half-grown
The two that were big were big as a barn
Big as a barn and tall as a tree
Took 'em right down to the factory

Slice 'em into bacon, chop 'em into ham
Roll 'em into hot dogs, squeeze 'em into Spam*
Throw their little eyes out in the rain
Pickle their feet and scramble their brains

Here's a little song about two wet pigs
Standin' by the slop trough, smokin' their cigs
Hopin' to God that they never get big
They danced all night at the Pigtown Jig

Posted by: Alaska Paul || 02/12/2004 14:00 Comments || Top||

#12  On the other hand spraying pig fat on the PA side of the security fence seems a promising idea.
Might want to apply a liberal coating of pig fat to the fence every few weeks. Not only will it keep away the paleos, it'll also keep away just about everything else - especially after about the third day in the hot Negev sun...
Posted by: Old Patriot || 02/12/2004 14:55 Comments || Top||

#13  "Don't you think someone will complain about the smell?"

"Ah, don't worry. You'd never smell it over the palestinians."
Posted by: BH || 02/12/2004 14:58 Comments || Top||

#14  especially after about the third day in the hot Negev sun...
Old Patriot
A little geography correction, the security fence/wall is not in the Negev it will be
the Judea and Samaria sun :)
Posted by: The Dodo || 02/12/2004 15:57 Comments || Top||

#15  I knew it. One of these days I would hear of flying pigs. I suppose dropping lard and fat from f16's on Paleo territory would really rile them up though. Go to their superstitions.
Posted by: dataman1 || 02/12/2004 17:21 Comments || Top||


Afghanistan/South Asia
Hamid Gul sez Pakistan’s walking into an American trap
Interview with Gul, including some stuff I hadn’t heard before.
B Raman, one of India’s leading experts on Pakistan, recalls how Hamid Gul actively backed Khalistani terrorists. "When Bhutto became prime minister in 1988," Raman says, "Gul justified backing these terrorists as the only way of pre-empting a fresh Indian threat to Pakistan’s territorial integrity. When she asked him to stop playing that card, he reportedly told her: ’Madam, keeping Punjab destabilized is equivalent to the Pakistan army having an extra division at no cost to the taxpayers.’"

"Gul strongly advocated supporting indigenous Kashmiri groups," adds Raman, "but was against infiltrating Pakistani and Afghan mercenaries into Jammu and Kashmir. He believed Pakistan would play into India’s hands by doing so."

How do you perceive the latest peace initiatives between India and Pakistan?
The SAARC meeting has certainly been different because America has arrived in the region, and both countries are alarmed. Pakistan is used to dealing with America; India is not. When (India’s Prime Minister Atal Bihari) Vajpayee says ’new questions have arisen,’ he is referring to America’s belligerence, its arrival in the region and its desire to control energy resources in Asia that rightfully belong to us.

What are the problem areas you see post-SAARC?
Kashmir. Pakistan wanted to use the instrument of SAARC and other development issues as a peripheral arrangement in order to find a way to solve the Kashmir problem. But I have my misgivings. I think India wants to bypass the Kashmir issue to get to Central Asia. India also wants to ward off America’s attempt to intervene directly in the Indian subcontinent. India also has an energy problem -- it imports 70 percent of its energy. If America is going to regulate the energy tap of Central Asia, they are going to indirectly regulate the growth of the Indian economy, which is linked to India’s political destiny. So India wants to build up her security arrangements. I have been discussing these issues with the Indians. The British ruled us by dividing us. Now America wants to dominate the world.

What is the solution to the Kashmir problem?
(Pakistan President Pervez) Musharraf and Vajpayee are trying to settle the Kashmir issue out of court. The court, in this case, are the people of Kashmir.

But India’s Deputy Prime Minister Advani is talking to the Hurriyat Conference.
Yes, but what is being worked out by Pakistan and India right now is a division of Kashmir and I am not for it. Will the people of Kashmir accept it? Kashmiriyat is 700 years old and India and Pakistan, in their present forms, are just 56 years old.

Could the Line of Control could turn into an international border?
India thinks so. America is apparently supporting this notion, but their underlying motive is an independent Kashmir. Two days before Vajpayeeji arrived in Islamabad, he made a significant statement. He said Pakistan would have to drop the idea of taking over the Muslim majority area of Kashmir. This means he does not accept the Chenab Line (The formal division of Kashmir along the Chenab river, as proposed by Pakistan-occupied Kashmir Prime Minister Sardar Sikandar Hayat last year). He says India will not accept another communal divide. But neither Azad (Pakistan-occupied) Kashmir nor the people of Pakistan will accept the division envisaged by India. It is in our blood.

What if Indians don’t accept any part of Kashmir going to Pakistan?
Musharraf says he expects India to accept the Chenab line. Many Pakistanis might support him, but will the Kashmiris agree? The Indians leaders are in trouble because of Article 370 of the Indian Constitution (which gives special status to Kashmir). The Chenab formula is not acceptable to India because, in that case, how will you maintain your armed forces against China, which is America’s requirement more than India’s? Right now, if a plebiscite is held, the Kashmiris will opt for Pakistan but a psychological moment will be created when the Kashmiris will say they can’t live with either India or Pakistan. At that time, America will step in and suggest a democratic solution to Kashmir. We are walking into the American trap. They are creating an environment whereby the Kashmiris will charge Pakistan with betrayal. In this new environment, America will ask for democracy in Kashmir. Right now, India and Pakistan are settling Kashmir over their heads. The Kashmiris will be bitter and up in arms; they will express their opposition.

But Advani is talking to the Kashmiri leaders.
Yes, it is a positive sign. But what will come out of it? More autonomy to Kashmir than any other Indian state is not acceptable to Pakistan. India’s army chief General (N C) Vij has said there are 2,500 freedom fighters in Kashmir -- he calls them infiltrators. They will kill some 7 or 8 (people) per day so that means the movement will be crushed by the time-frame of September 2004. Musharraf has given a commitment to India that there will be no infiltration from Pakistan’s side. How will India judge Musharraf’s sincerity?

By looking at the actual situation on the ground.
Right. Around September 2004, if actions (killings) go on in Kashmir then India will allege that Pakistan has not honoured its part of the deal so Pakistan is in a trap. If that happens, India will go back on the deal. If Kashmir is sold out like that we will have transferred the battle from Kashmir into Pakistan. That is going to destabilize Pakistan.

How do you analyze 9/11’s impact on Pakistan?
We were caught on the wrong foot. We had been supporting the Taliban and the Americans were quiet about it because the (American oil and gas major) UNOCAL lobby was working. I have been saying that 9/11 is the creation of America. To slap sanctions on Afghanistan they started spreading baseless allegations against Osama (bin Laden).

When did you meet Osama for the first time?
I met him for the first time in Sudan in December 1993. Then again in 1994 we attended a conference of Afghan leaders in the Middle East. He was soft-spoken with flashing black eyes. He doesn’t look like a blood-feasting terrorist. America is not able to catch him only because Allah doesn’t wish so.

How strong is Osama and Al Qaeda now?
Given the situation in Iraq, Osama’s cadre must be swelling rather than diminishing in stature, in confidence and in organization. These Arab mujahideen who were in the resistance movement against America are not products of madrassas. They are highly educated and belong to rich families. They are going for jihad in far off places like Bosnia, Chechnya and Afghanistan. In these places they were aliens — culturally and linguistically and in many other ways. But now, Iraq is a God-send for them.

What will happen in Iraq now?
The Shias and Kurdish elements were apprehensive about possibility of Saddam coming back to power as a result of their movement against America. Now that Saddam has gone these people feel free to fight against America. But before America is defeated in Iraq there will be a lot of turmoil in American society. Two things will happen before America is forced to withdraw from Iraq. One, their control over the energy situation will go and Israel will be exposed to threats from all directions. Will Israel lobby allow America to pull out? America will not pull out of Iraq unless it is totally drained out. So when America goes it won’t be a wise decision taken within time but a belated decision which will wreck America. Anyway, they are building the cantonment in Iraq for the next 20 years. That’s the reality. They will remain in Iraq till the energy is exhausted and then Americans will move on to the Caspian Sea area where the future energy source lies.

What do you think of the Americans, with whom you have been interacting since the days of the Afghan war?
Individually, they are very good. Americans are very easy to deal with. But collectively there is a dark impulse somewhere in policy making. That always comes out sharply when you deal with them. They want to dominate. They are cowboyish. They want to have things their way. They haven’t had any real opposition so far and that has been a tragedy. They have not experienced an imperial setback so far. The real one perhaps, just a small glimpse of it, was 9/11. What are 3,000 tragedies? We have had 300,000. We have gone through the trauma of India-Pakistan division. America has not matured as a nation.

But you cooperated with the Americans in Afghanistan. When and why did you turn against them?
First of all, I was not dealing with them as an individual -- we were working jointly in an operation. It was a task we were performing. I turned against America because they betrayed the Afghan nation. Afghans are great, very proud people. They are a gift to this world. Their tribes, their tremendous assimilation power, and their lust for freedom make them distinct. I love them.

You are said to have created the Taliban, and are often referred to as their godfather.
I didn’t create the Taliban. This is an Ahmed Rashid (journalist and author of a book on the Taliban) saying. I was a friend of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, (Burhanuddin) Rabbani and many Northern Alliance leaders like (assassinated Northern Alliance leader) Ahmed Shah Massoud. I was trying to broker peace between them in my individual capacity. They are wonderful people but very difficult to deal with. Any Afghan is a soldier, a politician, a businessman and a mullah rolled into one. And you can’t move them from the part they have set for themselves. They have the best and some of the worst human traits in them. And undoubtedly they are treacherous when they deal with an enemy. Massoud was my good friend. He was a tactician par excellence. He had a sharp brain.

What were the circumstances that led to the creation of the Taliban?
You can’t create the Taliban, it was a spontaneous body. If you understand the psyche of the Afghan nation you will know. After the Russian withdrawal, (then Afghan leader) Najibullah’s fall and the infighting of the mujahideen, an environment was created under which the Taliban was formed. I am not shy of accepting my link with the Taliban, but it is not true that I created it. When the Taliban first appeared in August 1994, I was in Kabul. I was brokering peace between Hekmatyar and Massoud. My first reaction was that the Taliban was let loose by the Americans to destroy the fruits of jihad. I told both Hekmatyar and Massoud that you have to unite to fight against the Taliban. The Talibanis were foot soldiers of jihadi leaders. They were part of jihad and frontline troops who drove Russians out of Afghanistan. These soldiers went back to madrassas, but then they thought that the Afghans were falling apart and chances of normalcy would recede. Then, a young woman belonging to the Noorjai tribe was raped by some people in east Kandahar. And from there Mullah Omar took off. Incidentally, (Taliban leader) Mullah Omar had never traveled to Pakistan. In fact, the Taliban movement began in defense of that woman. Mullah Omar was an ordinary mujahid. He collected only 40 people to start with. He said, ’tabrees (talim/study) haram hai.’ And he started the movement. Rashid’s book is a pack of lies. The Taliban was not created by Pakistan.
Posted by: Dan Darling || 02/12/2004 9:18:43 AM || Comments || Link || [336095 views] Top|| File under:

#1  This is far more revealing than I believe either Pakistan or Gul would wish. This, combined with the other readings from this part of the world, show a group of people willing to support any idiocy put forth by the mullahs, believe any lie that supports their inbred beliefs, and willing to take any action to preserve their illusions.

It's gonna be a loooooonng war...
Posted by: Old Patriot || 02/12/2004 13:29 Comments || Top||

#2  ah gul--the world's first true islamist dwarf--will no one go bowling with this deranged imp!!
Posted by: SON OF TOLUI || 02/13/2004 0:01 Comments || Top||


Caucasus
US ambassador links Chechens to al-Qaeda
There is a certain link between Chechen terrorism and Al-Qaeda, US Ambassador Alexander Vershbow said on Thursday. Al-Qaeda has managed to recruit the Chechen movement and use it for the fight against the world civilisation," he said to students of the International University in Moscow. According to the diplomat, the money, weapons and technologies of producing dangerous poisons were delivered to Chechnya from abroad, in particular Al-Qaeda.
Posted by: Dan Darling || 02/12/2004 9:06:08 AM || Comments || Link || [336069 views] Top|| File under:


Iraq-Jordan
Operation Saber Turner Phase II
TIKRIT, IRAQ - As part of "Operation Saber Turner Phase II", soldiers from 1st Battalion, 10th Cavalry Regiment raided a location in Yathrib and captured two individuals suspected of financing and planning rocket and improvised explosive device attacks against Coalition forces and innocent Iraqi citizens.

Soldiers captured five other individuals and confiscated three AK-47 assault rifles, one bolt-action rifle, three AK-47 assault rifle upper receivers, one 40mm mortar round, one Iraqi field manual for rocket and artillery equipment and PVC pipes that were the same color and type used in previous attacks.

Soldiers from 1st Battalion, 12th Infantry Regiment and 1st Battalion, 27th Infantry Regiment of the 173rd Airborne Brigade fired on a auto, wounding one individual, after the driver of the vehicle tried to avoid a checkpoint established during a search of a location east of Huwiyjah in evening of Feb. 10. Soldiers were in the area searching for individuals believed to be responsible for attacks against Coalition forces, when individuals using automatic weapons attacked them. Soldiers returned fire and the attackers fled.

A patrol from A Company, 1st Battalion, 22nd Infantry Regiment saw a mortar round explode near Al Ouja in the late afternoon of Feb. 10. The soldiers went to where they believed the mortar was fired. At that location soldiers encountered an Iraqi citizen who led to a weapons and ammunition cache where they discovered one 60mm mortar tube and 15 60mm mortars. Eight individuals found near the mortar cache were detained. A witness to the attack agreed to identify the people responsible and pointed out two individuals. Those two and two others captured are being held for questioning.
Posted by: Chuck Simmins || 02/12/2004 8:50:21 AM || Comments || Link || [336071 views] Top|| File under:


Sammy was just plain nuts prior to the war
This casts even more doubt on the whole idea of him being responsible for that Lebanese peace envoy. My guess is that Habbush was acting on his own accord (or maybe with the Russians), trying to salvage as much of the regime was possible.
A complacent Saddam Hussein was so convinced that war would be averted or that America would mount only a limited bombing campaign that he deployed the Iraqi military to crush domestic uprisings rather than defend against a ground invasion, according to a classified log of interrogations of captured Iraqi leaders and former officers. Mr. Hussein believed that a "casualty averse" White House would order a bombing campaign that Iraq could withstand, according to the secret report, prepared for the Pentagon’s most senior leadership and dated Jan. 26. And the Iraqi Defense Ministry, in a grand miscalculation, believed that any ground offensive would come across the Jordanian border.
They were ignoring the buildup and looking for the real assault to come from the west. Schartzkopf's Hail Mary left a hangover...
The study, a rough-draft history of the war from the perspective of Iraqi leaders, offers a scathing history of a Stalinist, paranoid leadership circle in Baghdad that guaranteed its own destruction. The interrogations yielded a portrait of a government disconnected from reality in peace and in war, where members of Mr. Hussein’s inner circle routinely lied to him and each other about Iraqi military capacities. The interrogations also reveal flaws in the Pentagon’s prewar operations, particularly the information campaign to demoralize and sway Iraqis from commanders down to foot soldiers. Two of the most celebrated American information operations — a campaign in which Arabic-speakers working for the United States government called private telephone numbers of senior Iraqi officials, and the widespread leaflet drops onto ground and air-defense forces — failed to persuade Iraqis to desert or join the Americans, according to the detainees.

Even so, both campaigns scored unexpected successes, the Iraqis revealed during their interrogations. When a wave of calls went out to the private telephone numbers of selected officials inside Iraq, asking them to turn against Mr. Hussein and avoid war, the Arabic speakers making the calls were so fluent that the recipients did not believe the calls were from Americans. Instead, the Iraqis believed the calls were part of a "loyalty test" mounted by Mr. Hussein’s secret services, the officials said during questioning. Afraid of arrest, incarceration, torture and even death, they refused to cooperate. But as a result, the officers limited their calls or stopped using those telephones altogether, hampering their ability to communicate in the critical days before war.

The military’s collection and analysis of interrogations was compiled by the Joint Forces Command in a report, "Iraqi Perspectives on O.I.F. Major Combat Operations," using the initials for "Operation Iraqi Freedom," the Bush administration’s name for the war effort. Late Wednesday, the officer in charge of the Joint Forces Command, Adm. Edmund P. Giambastiani Jr., said in a telephone interview that the report was written as part of a "very broad gauge" effort "to study what types of lessons we can gather when we go into combat." Admiral Giambastiani refused to discuss the contents of the report, citing its classification. But he did say the study was unusual for the American military in that it comprehensively compiled the views of an adversary to produce "a dynamic, interactive, real-time diagnosis, versus the usual static post-mortem." He added, "We like finding ground truth."

The study details problems with another information operation, and quotes Iraqis saying that the millions of leaflets — carrying statements like "Beware! Do not track or fire on coalition aircraft!" — did not incite desertions. But the leaflets intimidated Iraqi soldiers who realized that American bombers could just as easily drop their payloads on their locations, despite Iraq’s vaunted air defenses, according to the detained officials. Officials said that the Iraqi television broadcast system, and the telephone system linked by wires and fiber-optic cables, were unexpectedly resistant to attack. The leadership in Baghdad believed the United States would mount a long-distance air war, mostly focused in the south because Turkey, north of Iraq, had denied access rights. A bombing campaign could "be absorbed," leaving the government in control, Iraqi officials said during their interrogations. The interrogations were viewed by military officers who received the briefing as validating both the decision to send ground forces from the south to drive swiftly toward Baghdad — what Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the wartime commander, described as a strategy of "speed kills" — and the decision to use small numbers of Special Operations forces in western Iraq instead of large infantry forces in that section of the nation.

Despite the broad news media coverage of the American and British buildup in Kuwait, the Iraqi Defense Ministry insisted that Jordan would be the launching pad for the invasion, according to the detainees. That assessment was a wild misinterpretation of a series of Special Operations raids by relatively small numbers of the elite troops in the western desert, which began before the major land force crossed out of Kuwait. The goal of the Special Operations missions was to destroy border posts and blind the Iraqi military in those zones as American and allied commandos hunted for unconventional weapons and missiles and controlled that vast, desolate terrain.

Pentagon officials said that the politically charged question of whether Iraq possessed unconventional weapons just before the invasion came up during the many closed-door discussions about the study, but that the report carried a disclaimer that that question was not under review in the study. That job, officials said, was assigned to the Iraq Survey Group, which combined officers from the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the intelligence branches of the armed services, and until recently was under the direction of David A. Kay. Dr. Kay, the former chief C.I.A. weapons inspector, has said that his team learned that no Special Republican Guard units had chemical or biological weapons — but that all of the officers believed that some other Special Republican Guard unit had them. He said it appeared that the Iraqi officers were the victims of a disinformation campaign by Mr. Hussein. Pentagon officials and military officers said their scrutiny of the interrogations had found nothing to contradict Dr. Kay’s statements.
Posted by: Dan Darling || 02/12/2004 1:58:10 AM || Comments || Link || [336095 views] Top|| File under:

#1  They thought the invasion would be from Jordan!?

Good grief.
Posted by: Tony (UK) || 02/12/2004 2:05 Comments || Top||

#2  So Saddam didn't think we'd do it. The ME didn't think we'd do it.

And don't forget, we're cowards, but we're staying. If that memo is recent, after 2-1/2 years of experience w/the US, they still haven't learned.
Posted by: Anonymous2U || 02/12/2004 2:22 Comments || Top||

#3  And still Bush, Condi, Cheney and worst of all--Powell lied through their teeth about the WMD's which still have not been found--I bet 500 American soldier's families want to know what was up with that..
Posted by: NotMike Moore || 02/12/2004 2:49 Comments || Top||

#4  OT, but I am too tired to link this report of troops massing in Yemen, against Saudi "occupation" of parts of Yemen. Who'll send suicide-boomers, first?
http://yementimes.com/article.shtml?i=711&p=front&a=1
Who's up for posting this?
Posted by: Anonymous || 02/12/2004 3:36 Comments || Top||

#5  The emerging picture of Saddam as surrounded by scared shitless syncophants, first put out into the mainstream by Ken Pollock in the Threatening Storm, is confirmed in this story and underscores a very, very important matter.

He confirms that the leftists give hope to tyrants. Just like they did to the North Vietnamese. That they are, de facto, on the side of tyrants.

No one was going to tell the Saddam the truth and live.

But there's more too. Saddam thought we were weak, without the will to take casualties. His model Americans are leftists like the overwrought poster here. The underminers. The whiners. The ones who would rather that millions are murdered than do anything about it.

He confirms that the leftists give tyrants hope. Just like they did for the North Vietnamese.
Posted by: RMcLeod || 02/12/2004 3:41 Comments || Top||

#6  NMM: LIke you give a F*** about the families of soldiers. Or the Iraqi people. Or the truth. Or anything except your own irrelvance which you continue to demostrate quite effectively.
Posted by: Ben || 02/12/2004 5:20 Comments || Top||

#7  Or maybe the leftists unwittingly helped by lulling Saddam into a false sense of security. Way to go No Blood for Oiiiill-Creeps! Way to go Chirac!

It's fun letting our remaining enemies know that listening to the Left and the Old Europeans is liable to get you in serious trouble.
Posted by: Tokyo Taro || 02/12/2004 5:32 Comments || Top||

#8  YES!!!!! :-) to nmm for his/her insight on wmd. If any of the communal brain crew not including me or nmm know (as you seem so convinced) where Saddam hid his arsenal please inform.
Posted by: Antiwar || 02/12/2004 5:42 Comments || Top||

#9  Mr. Hussein believed that a "casualty averse" White House would order a bombing campaign that Iraq could withstand

I wonder how he got that idea. Maybe it was the four or five repetitions of the same thing from Clinton?
Posted by: Robert Crawford || 02/12/2004 7:11 Comments || Top||

#10  If any of the communal brain crew not including me or nmm know (as you seem so convinced) where Saddam hid his arsenal please inform.

Syria.

Aren't you paying attention?
Posted by: Parabellum || 02/12/2004 7:24 Comments || Top||

#11  NMM - have you seen my $20 bet? With the company you keep and your constant mantra of Bush lied - you should be able to provide me a quote!! For Fred...of course.
Posted by: B || 02/12/2004 7:34 Comments || Top||

#12  I'm sure being as honest as NMM and antiwar are, I'm sure they were just as against Clinton's Desert Fox and policy of regime change in Iraq as they are now that Bush has followed through on it.
/sarcasm off
Posted by: JerseyMike || 02/12/2004 7:37 Comments || Top||

#13  SYRIA????? how the bloody hell did he do that???? How would Saddam have moved a whole arsenal into another country in secret. You dogs are seriously braincramped.There were (before the villainous invasion)NO WMD. You are THE STUPID DUPES OF A STUPID PRESIDENT
Posted by: Antiwar || 02/12/2004 8:18 Comments || Top||

#14  Antiwar - my $20 bet is still open. It should be so easy for you to find me a quote.
Posted by: B || 02/12/2004 8:24 Comments || Top||

#15  B if you want a quote look yourself.I have already given what Scott Ritter said. Why are you so intent on believing that Saddam did have wmd? When it's obvious he did not.
Posted by: Antiwar || 02/12/2004 8:41 Comments || Top||

#16  OK let's pretend they were all lying (including Clinton). So they ALL knew YEARS beforehand that nothing would be found. CIA lied. Blair lied. Brit intel LIED. Saddam's brother-in-law LIED. Congressmen LIED. Thousands of people across the world were in on the big LIE. Everyone knew that this would turn into BUSH LIED forever. Why not just plant some evidence? This is EVIL BUSH we're talking about, right? Smart enough LIE the world into war, but too dumb to 'find' some weapons? (p.s. why was the left too stupid to expose the lies BEFORE the war? They had a YEAR. Even France never said there were no WMD, only that it wasn't worth war)
Posted by: Nonnymus || 02/12/2004 8:44 Comments || Top||

#17  Ah, Scott Ritter. As the head of UNSCOM, Richard Butler, put it in September 2002:
"Until the day he left UNSCOM, Scott was robustly advising me, in writing -- you know, the papers are out there to prove it -- that Iraq continued to retain illegal weapons. He begged me to authorize him to go in and do what he called "kick in the doors and find those weapons." Sometimes, I authorized him to lead inspections; sometimes I rejected his proposals because, quite frankly, they were a little bit off the wall.
Now, his advice to me then, on the basis of good evidence which I knew, was that Iraq continued to retain illegal weapons. He resigned. A few months later, he crossed the road and for some reason -- I don't know why, I am not a psychoanalyst -- but he crossed the road and started to tell the world that there were no such weapons.

So I put it to you this way. Either he was misleading me when he worked for me, or he began to mislead the world's public later. Now, I know which one it is. He was not misleading me, rather, he is now misleading the world's public. And I find that sad, wrong, and frankly, a touch dangerous."
Posted by: Nonnymus || 02/12/2004 8:53 Comments || Top||

#18  You are as idiotic as the president you voted for. You cannot find what does not exist.Bush has a good and evil side like anyone. He used his evil side to lie and invade Iraq. Your right about Blair lied,he certainly did. NO WMDS IN IRAQ.
Posted by: Antiwar || 02/12/2004 8:57 Comments || Top||

#19  Of course there were WMDs in Iraq. I'm not sure where they are now, but it's obvious they were there since HE USED THEM... sheesh this isn't very complicated. Now they could be buried in the desert somewhere, he could have moved them to another country or he really might have destroyed them (which would be odd since... why would he destroy them but then refuse to allow the UN to see his documentation/proof of destruction... I mean why destroy them in the first place to appease the world but then refuse to prove to the world that you did it?!?).

I hope we find them because it's pretty dangerous to have them floating around out there but in terms of the cause for war it is irrelevent to me. All I care about is that a wealthy autocratic regime that was a sworn enemy of the US has been toppled and in the process we've given hope to 25 million people in Iraq and 10s of millions more in the region. The world will be a far better place without Saddam and we have GWB to thank for it. It will be an even better place once we get rid of Khomenai and Kim... but all in due time.
Posted by: Damn_Proud_American || 02/12/2004 9:20 Comments || Top||

#20  The world would be better if GWB was not president hopefully he will not rig another election and America hopefully will get a good president. Do you know that GWB said the human and the fish can coexist peacefully;ever see a fish walking on dry land?
Posted by: Antiwar || 02/12/2004 9:33 Comments || Top||

#21  Don't forget that those films of the dead Kurds were lies too. The chemical weapons attacks never happened. Nope.
Posted by: Lil Dhimmi || 02/12/2004 9:42 Comments || Top||

#22  Oh, and the Iranians lied too.
Posted by: Lil Dhimmi || 02/12/2004 9:44 Comments || Top||

#23  Lil Dimmy while it's true Saddam gassed the Kurds and Iranians back in the 1980's he did not have any wmds prior to operation coalition crap.
Posted by: Antiwar || 02/12/2004 9:57 Comments || Top||

#24  LMAO, of yeah the world would be SO MUCH better without GWB, right? But Saddam, Khomenai, Arafat, Assad, Kim, Mugabe, Castro and Chavez (to name a few) make the world so much better! Seriously, I see it as one of 3 possibilities for leftist. Thet are either 1) incredibly stupid 2) have lost their moral compass and want leftist to win so bad they've sided with the evil in the world because they promise to support that happening or 3) they are evil themselves and hiding behind the leftist mantra to hide their true intentions.
Posted by: Damn_Proud_American || 02/12/2004 10:00 Comments || Top||

#25  "while it's true Saddam gassed the Kurds and Iranians back in the 1980's he did not have any wmds prior to operation coalition crap"

Ummmm... so when exactly did he get rid of them?
Posted by: Damn_Proud_American || 02/12/2004 10:01 Comments || Top||

#26  Antiwar you are such a mindless piece of shit. Do you deny that every, EVERY intelligence agency in the world including France, Germany and Russia, all said he had wmd? Were they in on this big "lie"? Answer me you little toad. Or are you really that fucking stupid? How is it possible to be so brainless and continue to live? Mommy and daddy must spend a lot of time protecting you from yourself. Do the world a favor, just go away. This site is for grownups to debate. Not for mindless little children to blather on.
Posted by: AllahHateMe || 02/12/2004 10:04 Comments || Top||

#27  A simple mnemonic for NMM and Anti-war to remember, potentially saving them some embarassment down the road: No proof of existence is not the same as proof of no existence.

I don't expect them to stay on message if the WMD are found, they will simply scope creep their criticism to any number of more refined criticisms: "There may have been WMD, but not enough to do major damage"; "Saddam didn't know he had them..."...etc. etc.

It's hilarious to me that these shitbags will not believe the long-standing assessment of a majority of the free worlds' intelligence agencies, but rather accept, unquestioningly, the assessment of NYT, Washington Post, et al. which changes like the wind blows.



Posted by: mjh || 02/12/2004 10:14 Comments || Top||

#28  Allahhateme(no God doesn't hate you)SADDAM DID NOT HAVE WMD BEFORE THE INVASION WHAT DO I CONSIDER YOU? A WARMONGERING MURDERER BY PROXY AS YOU SUPPORT THOSE WHO WAGE WAR.
Posted by: Antiwar || 02/12/2004 10:27 Comments || Top||

#29  let's ignore pro-tyranny anti-war. He has no facts, only spew.
Posted by: B || 02/12/2004 10:35 Comments || Top||

#30  ever see a fish walking on dry land?

Yes.

http://www.kloognome.com/gallery/album26/abd

Posted by: Robert Crawford || 02/12/2004 10:38 Comments || Top||

#31  Don't be afraid allahateme because

There is no god named allah
Mohammed was a liar.
Posted by: Shipman || 02/12/2004 10:40 Comments || Top||

#32  Yes, antiwar, there is a fish which walks on dry land, up to 5(?) miles to find water.

A Chinese carp(?) which has been found in the US. This thing is an eating machine and a threat to the local fish.

Where have you been? It's been in the papers.
Posted by: Anonymous2U || 02/12/2004 10:44 Comments || Top||

#33  antiwar i like you bro but your mad at the wrong person. it wasnt bushes fault it was chaineys!
Posted by: muck4doo || 02/12/2004 10:46 Comments || Top||

#34  Muckadoo it was Chaney's fault yes for listening to Bush, he should think for himself but sadly he probably thinks along the same lines as GWB which is sad for all nations.Shipman, Allah is God,doesn't matter what a fool like you thinks. Can the chinese fish walk around for more than five or whatever miles that is can it actually live on dry land all the time,without water? I'll be surprised if it does. In reverse you might swim but could you live without breathing apparel underwater all the time?
Posted by: Antiwar || 02/12/2004 11:00 Comments || Top||

#35  To my Dearest ANTI-WAR and NOTMIKEMOORE:
I feel open-minded about discussing Iraq, but the ONE-AND-ONLY argument ever offered is BUSH LIED. Do you have ANYTHING else to offer? And what will you do if WMD are found? Concoct another conspiracy theory? Don't be just a slogan and a bullhorn, it's tired.
Posted by: Nonnymus || 02/12/2004 11:40 Comments || Top||

#36  WHAT DO I CONSIDER YOU? A WARMONGERING MURDERER BY PROXY AS YOU SUPPORT THOSE WHO WAGE WAR.
listen here troll...it is idiotarians like you who are the murderers-by-proxy. Leftist morons, like yourself, make it safe and comfy for tyrants like Saddam to butcher his own people and those of other nations by the millions, you directly enable them- propping them up with a false construct of sovereignty. Sovereignty does not extend down from a leader, it extends upward from the people. The coalition had every legal right and authority to go in and oust Saddam ....WMD doesn't enter the argument here. If there's blood around here...it's on your hands, troll.
Posted by: Rex Mundi || 02/12/2004 13:28 Comments || Top||

#37  Once more. There WERE weapons of mass destruction. Saddam Hussein was actively pursuing greater destructive power. The Israelis didn't destroy the Osirak nuclear "research" facility because Hussein was working on nuclear medical techniques.

I KNOW there were WMDs. I saw them with my own eyes. I saw the storage sites (exactly identical, down to the width of the "clear" zone around them, to Russian WMD chemical & biological storage sites), I saw the decontamination equipment, and I saw the areas where Hussein tested his little "beauties" - both against the Iranians and against animals (and possibly people - the film wasn't that good).

I spent 26 years in the Air Force. Most of that time was spent as an imagery analyst - one of the specialists that looked at all that imagery we took around the world with satellites, SR-71's, U-2's, RF-4Cs, RA-5's, and a hundred other collection platforms. I had a Top Secret codeword clearance, and access to just about everything the US intelligence community had.

I don't know who's playing games in Iraq, or why. I do know those weapons existed, and I suspect they continue to exist, somewhere. I'd be willing to bet my next month's retirement check that someone in the current Administration knows EXACTLY where those weapons are. I'd also be willing to bet we've found some of them, but are keeping the truth classified. Why, I have no idea, but I could put forth a few halfway educated guesses.

The idiotarian LLL moron trolls on this thread and others know nothing. All they're good for is spewing today's LLL talking points. I have less respect for them than I do any turbantop, and the regulars here know how much regard I have for those... 8^).
Posted by: Old Patriot || 02/12/2004 14:24 Comments || Top||

#38  Doesn't really matter to me if wmd there or not.
He deserved to fall and he will get a fair trail then a fair execution and all i can say is good riddance to bad rubbish
Posted by: djohn66 || 02/12/2004 15:29 Comments || Top||

#39  "ever see a fish walking on dry land?"

-sure have, the guy calls himself Michael Moore; a flounder's a fish right?
Posted by: Jarhead || 02/12/2004 20:08 Comments || Top||

#40  "A WARMONGERING MURDERER BY PROXY AS YOU SUPPORT THOSE WHO WAGE WAR."

-nice line, I love that shit, gives me a woody. Keep talkin' dirty to me baby!! My job if called upon by our "stupid, evil genius of a c-n-c" is to wage war. Does that make me a murderer by proxy? Or a warmonger? Or Both? Oh well, guess I can live w/that.

Just remember antiwar, its because of us warmongering, knuckledragging, neanderthal-rednecks that windbagged pussies like yourself can openly disparage our president on the net or in any open forum for that matter. Enjoy your freedom cake-boy, just don't forget who gives it to you.

Listen up son, did you hear that?? Sounds to me like 10 other Rantburgers just called you a dumb-ass. And that's the bottomline........
Posted by: Jarhead || 02/12/2004 20:19 Comments || Top||

#41  muck4doo. The black helicopters are coming tonight. Be ready.
Posted by: chainey || 02/12/2004 22:40 Comments || Top||


Red Thingy Cross Confident It Will See Saddam
The Red Thingy Cross has visited imprisoned officials of Saddam Hussein’s toppled regime and expressed confidence Wednesday that U.S. authorities will allow it to see the former Iraqi dictator "sooner rather than later."
"Sammy can't talk to you now. He's... ummm... in the shower."
"He’s a POW and supposed to be like any POW," said Nada Doumani, a spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Thingy Cross, which requested permission to visit Saddam soon after he was captured Dec. 13 and the United States declared him a prisoner of war. U.S. officials refused to comment on anything related to Saddam’s interrogation and referred questions to the Red Thingy Cross.
"We’re busy. Talk to you later." [click]
Doumani told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from Amman, Jordan, that the neutral, Swiss-run ICRTC had seen most if not all of the 43 other high-ranking Iraqis captured by coalition forces. "We have no problem of access to other people so far," she said. As for Saddam Hussein, she added, "We believe that we will be able to see him sooner rather than later."
And then she starts making sense:
She said there is nothing in the Geneva Conventions that would prohibit Saddam’s being tried by a coalition tribunal. "It can also be by an ad hoc international tribunal that can be established by a resolution of the Security Council," she said. "We could envision that it could happen (that the Iraqis try Saddam) once authority is transferred to the Iraqis in June and military tribunals are established again," Doumani said.
But the International Criminal Court wasn’t mentioned. Two points for Nada.
Once authority is transferred to the Iraqis, when Sammy's transferred to their care and feeding he ceases to be a POW. He becomes an internal affair...
But the ICRTC doesn’t get into who conducts the trial as long as it is a military tribunal of a sovereign country that is party to the Geneva Conventions. The trial can be for what a POW did before the latest war, including "other war crimes or crimes against humanity," but "not for what he has done during the latest war for being a soldier," she said.
Depends on what he did as "a soldier." Sammy's trial would be based on what he did as head of state. They can also add in charges on his actions after he ceased being head of state. But I suspect what'll hang him is gassing the Kurds...
She said there was some misconception about Saddam’s rights after he was declared a POW.
No, really?
"Some people, especially in Iraq, thought that as long as he was given this POW status he cannot be prosecuted, which is totally wrong, because you have plenty of articles in the Third Geneva Convention where it can even go as far as a death sentence.
Oh, the Euros will be ever so unhappy!
"But he cannot be tried for simply participating in hostilities because the whole idea for a POW is that he is a soldier doing his job in defending his country, so you cannot try him for defending or for fighting. You can only try him if he went beyond and committed a war crime or a crime against humanity or a crime prior to war."
That's what I said...
"Whatever is done, it has to be done according to the law," she said. "Judicial guarantees should be respected, the right to defense, impartiality, transparency and all these things," she said. "This is valid not just for Saddam Hussein, it’s valid for any soldier, any Iraqi POW."
She sure made the surprise meter twitch -- an NGO representative who knew the law and made sense!
Posted by: Steve White || 02/12/2004 1:05:46 AM || Comments || Link || [336095 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Can he be tried for NOT defending his country, or doing his job? For not participating in hostilities, and instead hiding in a septic tank somewhere?
Posted by: Ben || 02/12/2004 5:24 Comments || Top||

#2  Saddam should be tried of course but he should not be executed as if he is how can we condemn him for executing.Besides retribution does not solve anything an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind
Posted by: Antiwar || 02/12/2004 5:46 Comments || Top||

#3  Shouldn't be executed? And what pray tell shall we do? Give him a life sentence in a cushy cell somewhere where people can rant and rave about freeing him cuz he wasn't all that bad (your own words here antiwar) all the time, or perhaps letting him have a chance to become a martyr? Or perhaps you just don't want the Iraqis to get their own justice seeing as how it was them that he killed?
Posted by: Valentine || 02/12/2004 6:16 Comments || Top||

#4  Killing is never right not for Saddam not for anyone.Executing Saddam Hussein will not bring back those he executed anyway America has the death penalty should we execute Bush for executing people on death row? i expect your answer is no. So why then should Saddam be executed.God said only he has the right to take human life and who knows better God or you?
Posted by: Antiwar || 02/12/2004 6:38 Comments || Top||

#5  So why then should Saddam be executed.

Anyone still doubt that Antiwar is fu&ked up?
Posted by: Rafael || 02/12/2004 7:22 Comments || Top||

#6  "So why then should Saddam be executed"

Several million Iraqi,Kuwaiti,and Irainian dead scream from the grave for his death.

Take your head out of the sand,clean the blood off your rose colored glasses,and pay attention.
Some people deserve nothing less that death!
Posted by: Raptor || 02/12/2004 7:54 Comments || Top||

#7  "So why then should Saddam be executed"

Several million Iraqi,Kuwaiti,and Irainian dead scream from the grave for his death.

Take your head out of the sand,clean the blood off your rose colored glasses,and pay attention.
Some people deserve nothing less that death!
Posted by: Raptor || 02/12/2004 7:54 Comments || Top||

#8  From the Christian angle, Antiwar is ofcourse completely correct -- christianity (traditional christianity atleast) forbids the death penalty, no ifs and buts. Vengeance is left to God's authority alone, not Man's.

That's a religious argument which can't really bear dispute either on a logical or an emotional basis, given how it's a matter of faith alone.

--

As for me, though I don't consider myself a Christian, I am also anti-Death penalty -- but I can also definitely make an exception for people with more than a million deaths in their hands.

Saddam should be killed, in a decision made by an Iraqi court. And I don't think you'll find that many "Euros" strongly objecting to that.
Posted by: Aris Katsaris || 02/12/2004 8:15 Comments || Top||

#9  Right so it's ok (by the communal braincrew) to execute Saddam but wasn't for him to execute?? HYPOCRITES TALKING.
Posted by: Antiwar || 02/12/2004 8:22 Comments || Top||

#10  I am also anti-Death penalty -- but I can also definitely make an exception for people with more than a million deaths in their hands.

Wow, Aris, you're such a hardass. When I kill 500,000 I want you as my judge.

SR
Posted by: Steve YAO || 02/12/2004 8:29 Comments || Top||

#11  Oh, Good Lord. I suppose that you thought that Goering should not have been given the death penalty, either?

To show mercy to a murderer is an insult to his victims.
Posted by: Jackal || 02/12/2004 8:33 Comments || Top||

#12  Jackal, you are indeed a hypocrite.
Posted by: Antiwar || 02/12/2004 8:44 Comments || Top||

#13  Antiwar,the death penalty for a maniacal tryant, who will benefit from due process of law, is not the same as the penalty imposed on those tortured and then executed on the whim of this man and his lawless regime. The difference between the application of justice under the law and out-and-out mayhem and murder shouldn't be too hard for even you to grasp.
Posted by: GK || 02/12/2004 8:46 Comments || Top||

#14  Aris, I'm sorry - you are simply wrong about the position of "tradition Christianity" on the death penalty. While there have been exceptions, most church authorities acknowledge the right of the state to administer justice, up to and including death for heinous crimes.

As far as I'm concerned, Saddam's torture chambers quality as heinous crimes for which he has not repented.

As to my right to comment on this matter, I was raised and Chrismated in the Orthodox church and have read the eastern Church Fathers carefully. As an adult I was trained to be an Episcopal priest and have read both the Roman and Protestant theologians as well.

This forum is not the place for me to quote 2000 years of theology on the authority of the state or on civil (as opposed to ecclesiastical) justice. But if you are really interested in the topic, email me at the address provided and I'll respond privately.
Posted by: anon MDiv || 02/12/2004 8:52 Comments || Top||

#15  Saddam has the same right to life as anyone. Because he executed does not deny that fact. He was wrong to execute all those people. To kill is immoral.He commited a heinous crime by his taking of life,but it would be equally immoral for his life to be taken.
Posted by: Antiwar || 02/12/2004 9:05 Comments || Top||

#16  OTOH, I'm not awake enough to click on the right button to correct my typing errors. LOL - off to find some caffeine.
Posted by: anon MDiv || 02/12/2004 9:07 Comments || Top||

#17  "Wow, Aris, you're such a hardass. When I kill 500,000 I want you as my judge. SR"

Actually in the vast majority of the democratic world, whether I was your judge or not wouldn't have much difference since the death penalty is outlawed one way or another.

We are talking legislation and politics here, not judicial decisions. :-)

And actually, personally, I can make an exception for dictators regardless of number of people killed or not. As long as its their own formerly oppressed nation that chooses to kill them.

anon MDiv> I should have probably said "early" Christianity, rather than "traditional". Once it got turned into a state religion, Christianity's message started getting compromised -- and the absolute opposition towards the death penalty was the first thing to go, it seems.

http://www.stjohndc.org/stjohndc/English/Command/9205.htm

Posted by: Aris Katsaris || 02/12/2004 9:11 Comments || Top||

#18  Saddam has the same right to life as anyone.

What are your thoughts on abortion, Antiwar?
Posted by: whitecollar redneck || 02/12/2004 9:30 Comments || Top||

#19  I don't believe in abortion.
Posted by: Antiwar || 02/12/2004 9:49 Comments || Top||

#20  Any caveats or conditions?
Posted by: whitecollar redneck || 02/12/2004 10:00 Comments || Top||

#21  The good Russian Orthodox priest whose site you reference does not quote the early church in full, Aris.

He omits, for instance, "Those who live by the sword shall die by the sword", but also the writings of Origen and Ignatius both on this topic.


The one Western theologian he cites is not considered one of the influential Fathers of the Church. But if we go, for instance, to Tertulllian (who is) we will find a rather different message.

I am not saying that there isn't a case to be made against the death penalty. I *am* saying that you have not made it, at least for Christians.

Not surprising, since you say you yourself aren't one. (smile)
Posted by: anon MDiv || 02/12/2004 10:25 Comments || Top||

#22  Aris you obsfucating twit, the Catholic Church and for that matter most of the rest of the Christian denominations did many arguments about this for a long time, what they determined was that the commandement in question comes down to saying "You shall not murder". There is a major difference between killing and murdering.
Posted by: Valentine || 02/12/2004 14:11 Comments || Top||

#23  Any person has the God-given right to live free of fear. Those who threaten, those who instill fear, threaten the basis of all laws. They are tyrants, and must be removed from society. Once a certain level of tyranny has been reached, the only sure way of removing them from society, and guaranteeing that they will no longer harm others, is through execution. Dead men cannot harm others. This is the sole legal basis for a death penalty, and at the same time the absolute moral justification for it. Those who think differently are deluded into believing either in "rehabilitation", or that by locking someone up they can absolutely guarantee they will never harm another. Both have been proven fallacious so often the entire idea is ridiculous. Hang the bas$$$$ from one of his own statues, if any of them still stand.
Posted by: Old Patriot || 02/12/2004 14:35 Comments || Top||

#24  Valentine, you ignorant twit, Jesus supposedly said "Whoever has no sin, let them cast the first stone" in an execution case which would have been quite clear-cut lawful under Mosaic law.

And ofcourse he also stopped his followers from using violence even in a matter of clear self-defense, when he said "Those who live by the sword shall die by the sword" and stopped Peter from defending him.

And Valentine, who said anything about Moses' commandment? I'm talking about Christian teachings here, not Judaic ones.

anon MDiv> I haven't read Origen and Ignatius, but I thought that both of them condemned Christian participation in death penalty -- I will try to google for more info.
Posted by: Aris Katsaris || 02/12/2004 14:43 Comments || Top||

#25  Hmm... Origen's comments in book VII, Chapter 26 of his "Contra Celsus" seem very ambiguous to me.

He writes: "For Christians could not slay their enemies, or condemn to be burned or stoned, as Moses commands, those who had broken the law, and were therefore condemned as deserving of these punishments; since the Jews themselves, however desirous of carrying out their law, are not able to inflict these punishments. But in the case of the ancient Jews, who had a land and a form of government of their own, to take from them the right of making war upon their enemies, of fighting for their country, of putting to death or otherwise punishing adulterers, murderers, or others who were guilty of similar crimes, would be to subject them to sudden and utter destruction whenever the enemy fell upon them; for their very laws would in that case restrain them, and prevent them from resisting the enemy. "

But he then follows this up with an indication that God didn't want that Jewish state to any longer exist or any of the things that it used to follow -- and he says that "all the devices of men against Christians have been brought to sought; for the more that kings, and rulers, and peoples have persecuted them everywhere, the more they have increased in number and grown in strength."

This whole passage indicates to me that Origen felt the death penalty to be a thing of the past, as dead as the jewish state was during the time of his writing -- and unnecessary as the Christians can't be hindered by the punishments of their enemies, in contrast to Israel who (he felt) needed death penalty in order to survive.

Or so I take it to mean, anyway. Opinions may differ.

Still haven't checked up on Ignatius.
Posted by: Aris Katsaris || 02/12/2004 15:03 Comments || Top||

#26  Old Patriot> Those who think differently are deluded into believing either in "rehabilitation", or that by locking someone up they can absolutely guarantee they will never harm another. Both have been proven fallacious so often the entire idea is ridiculous.

It has also been proven fallacious the idea that there don't exist serious miscarriages of justice. Those wrongly applied executions probably kill far more innocent people than the ones who happen to be killed during the rare cases where a lifer manages to escape from jail.
Posted by: Aris Katsaris || 02/12/2004 15:08 Comments || Top||

#27  Those wrongly applied executions probably kill far more innocent people than the ones who happen to be killed during the rare cases where a lifer manages to escape from jail.

And your evidence for this is, what, exactly?
Posted by: Robert Crawford || 02/12/2004 15:32 Comments || Top||

#28  Go Aris! Raise Hell!

Okay.. NMM, Murat, AntiWar, Mr.Muck... examine Aris and learn from a pro.
Posted by: Shipman || 02/12/2004 16:46 Comments || Top||

#29  Okay, how do I say this gently?

Aris, googling an author you've never read, from a very long time ago, for a particular passage is ... shall we say ... not the deepest way to understand his teaching?
Posted by: anon MDiv || 02/12/2004 17:07 Comments || Top||

#30  Aris, here is one of several interesting comments I've found doing a search on "recidivism" and "murder". There are those that support your assertion - the most adamant of those by Amnesty USA. This one has this interesting quote in the second paragraph:

National data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics demonstrate that 35.1% of the male prison population is incarcerated after conviction for violent crimes, running the gamut from homicide to assault. 62% of the violent offenders recidivate after release from incarceration. That is more than 1 out of every 2 released inmates convicted for violent crimes (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1989). These odds bode ill for the victims of these violent offenders and for the general public.


I would hate to see any innocent person die. That includes the victim of a convicted killer that's gotten some psychobabble-crazed parole board convinced they've "changed" just as much as any 'innocent' accused. I don't doubt there are fraudulent convictions in this country, and the likelihood of such convictions in other countries is equally high. That doesn't stop me from wanting to see any person who consistently preys on others removed from my society - permanently, if necessary.
Posted by: Old Patriot || 02/12/2004 17:56 Comments || Top||

#31  The key to OP's comment is that just locking a former national leader up keeps some core of his followers energized. Imagine, for instance, what might have happened had Hitler been imprisoned. Think of the SS nut cases that would have kept up the fight simply because they knew he was alive.

This goes far beyond just the execution of a murderer. It has to do with the execution of a regime. Saddam and his top lieutenants should all hang so that he and his ilk can never bring harm to Iraq again.
Posted by: remote man || 02/12/2004 19:19 Comments || Top||

#32  Let the Iraqi's try him as they see fit. Enough said.
Posted by: Jarhead || 02/12/2004 20:01 Comments || Top||

#33  anon MDiv> You didn't provide me with anything more specific than their *names* to assert your position that these church fathers supported the death penalty, so what other resort did I have other than google for "Origen death penalty" and try to locate the passages that others had located before me? If you had been more specific with quotes, same way I had tried to be specific with quotes, it might have been easier for me, and politer of you.

Old Patriot> I don't think it's good to use the fear of incompetent parole board in deciding whether the death penalty should exist or not -- because then we could equally well start using the fear of incompetent juries during appeals and say that murderers shouldn't get an appeal, and the fear of incompetent juries and say that *suspected murderers* shouldn't get even a trial, they should be killed on the spot...

I'm assuming that when we are talking about the abolition of death penalty, we're talking about it's substitution with life in jail. In which case the only scenario in which such a convicted prisoner will get out to harm others is if he escapes, not get released.

Robert> I've googled enough for one thread. Help me out and tell me where I can find info about number of innocent people killed by condemned lifers that escaped, and we'll start having some facts on which to start reaching a conclusion.

But until that time, it's other people who first made the implicit suggestion that this number is high enough to be worth considering, given how "Dead men cannot harm others."... Other people ought to support it -- and criminals getting released from jail and killing more folk isn't a good enough an answer IMAO, because I never suggested that death penalty convicts should get *released*, I'm talking about a scenario where only *escape* would manage to get them out.

remote man> I have already mentioned that I have no problem with the death penalty for former dictators -- and my reasons is what you stated, it being the execution of a regime.
Posted by: Aris Katsaris || 02/12/2004 20:32 Comments || Top||

#34  Aris - there are other scenarios. For example locally (Pennsylvania), convicted (multiple) murderers have been *pardoned* by the governor, then commit more murders after their release. Obviously someone sentenced to "life withot the possibility of parole" shouldn't be pardoned, but it happens.
Posted by: Lurker || 02/12/2004 21:43 Comments || Top||

#35  If anyone really wants the biblical posistion on capital punishment read Genesis 9:5-6,Romans13:1-7
Posted by: Anonymous || 02/13/2004 0:16 Comments || Top||


Africa: Horn
Tribal clashes kill 13 in Kenya
Tribal fighting between cattle rustlers and herdsmen in northern Kenyan killed at least 13 people, including three children, a government official said Wednesday. Armed fighters from the Pokot tribe attacked members of the Turkana tribe late Sunday in Kataluk, about 310 miles northwest of Nairobi, and stole cattle, sheep, goats and donkeys, District Commissioner Njenga Miiri told The Associated Press. Eight people, including the children, were shot to death in that attack, and two Pokot were killed by pursuing Turkana tribesmen, Miiri said. Three other Turkana were killed in fighting between the rival tribesmen that continued into Monday, he said. "I have mobilized my district security team and now we are heading to the scene to ascertain the exact number of people killed," Miiri said.

The attack came days after the government suspended an operation to seize illegal arms in northern Kenya’s West Pokot district after Pokot tribesmen fled into neighboring Uganda to evade police. Last month, Pokot warriors shot and killed 10 people, including five children, in two raids in Turkana and set dozens of huts on fire before stealing thousands of goats and hundreds of camels. The Turkana and Pokot are nomadic tribes that have competed for livestock and grazing land for centuries. While raids have always been common, the introduction of modern weapons into the region following conflicts in neighboring Uganda, Sudan and Somalia have made the raids more lethal.
Posted by: Dan Darling || 02/12/2004 12:53:37 AM || Comments || Link || [336068 views] Top|| File under:

#1  "Git your shooting iron, boy! Them dirty Pok rustlers dun made off with my favorite sheep!"
Posted by: Steve || 02/12/2004 8:41 Comments || Top||

#2  Dang, sounds like the Jackson County range war.
Posted by: Shipman || 02/12/2004 17:24 Comments || Top||


Sudan opts out of peace talks with Darfur rebels
The Sudanese government canceled plans to attend scheduled peace talks in Geneva next week with western rebels, officials said Wednesday, just days after the president proclaimed military victory in the insurgency. On Monday, President Omar el-Bashir said the military was "in full control" of the troubled Darfur province in western Sudan and offered amnesty to surrendering rebels. The army recently has announced several successes over the rebel groups in fighting near the border with Chad. Peace talks between the government and two rebel groups, the Sudan Liberation Army and the Justice and Equality Movement, were scheduled to begin Feb. 14 in Geneva under the mediation of the Henry Dunant Center for Humanitarian Dialogue.

Zakaria Mohammed Ali, secretary-general of the Justice and Equality Movement, said the government refused to attend the talks because it wants to pursue a military solution to the conflict in impoverished Darfur. "We were willing to go, but the government does not want to come," Ali said from Germany. "Now that the government is strong militarily, they do not want talks with the rebels."

Dunant Center spokesman Andy Andrea confirmed that the talks will not take place. "Unfortunately, the Government of Sudan declined our invitation to attend when we met with senior representatives in Khartoum on Sunday," he said. "We remain in close contact with all the parties while considering the next steps."

Sudanese presidential spokesman Abbas Ibrahim al-Nour said Tuesday the government of President Omar el-Bashir wanted the peace talks held in Sudan. "We have said we are for holding a national conference here to discuss the problem of Darfur, and we have said we are committed to removing any hurdle in front of those wishing to participate -- including those who carry arms," al-Nour said. A day earlier, el-Bashir announced that major military operations were over in Darfur, adding that government forces were in "full control." Ali dismissed el-Bashir’s claim of "full control" in Darfur as a lie, saying rebels still were fighting in its west and north. He said government forces and allied Arab militia recaptured the border town of Tine on Feb. 1, but he said it was not of importance to the rebels. "We will teach them a lesson that we are still alive," Ali said. "Just now there is a really big battle in Darfur."
Posted by: Dan Darling || 02/12/2004 12:52:30 AM || Comments || Link || [336073 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Where the hell do these guys get their ammo? Peshawar? Do they have one of those computer aided manufacturing devices?
Posted by: Lucky || 02/12/2004 1:09 Comments || Top||

#2  The government or the rebels?
Posted by: Phil Fraering || 02/12/2004 1:20 Comments || Top||

#3  Both. Who's the money, who's your buddy. Remember I'm a soph.
Posted by: Lucky || 02/12/2004 1:37 Comments || Top||


Caucasus
15 Chechen hard boyz surrender after mufti’s condemnation
15 members of illegal armed groups voluntarily laid down their arms in Chechnya. A source in the regional staff for dealing with anti-terrorist activities in the North Caucasus told RBC that the surrendered rebels were from Vedeno and Nozhay-Yurt. The final decision to surrender was made after Chechen spiritual leaders had criticized the recent terrorist act in the Moscow Metro of February 6.
Posted by: Dan Darling || 02/12/2004 12:46:36 AM || Comments || Link || [336068 views] Top|| File under:


Afghanistan/South Asia
Potential suicide bombers in Kabul
The outgoing commander of NATO peacekeeping forces in Afghanistan said on Wednesday several potential suicide bombers had infiltrated Kabul, but he dismissed reports that there were as many as 60. "I learned about the 60 potential suicide bombers...a boastful announcement by self-appointed spokespeople from the Taliban-al Qaeda side," said German General Goetz Gliemeroth. "This is not substantiated but it does not ease our work...we learnt that some potential suicide bombers had infiltrated, to my estimate less than 10," he told a news conference at NATO’s headquarters in Brussels. "We witnessed...two striking, and there was no guarantee that at those times there hadn’t been more in the city," said Gliemeroth, who handed command of the 6,400-strong International Security Assistance Force to a Canadian general on Monday.

Gliemeroth said he was not surprised by U.S. estimates that the number of hard-core insurgents had slipped below 1,000. "It’s sometimes not the number of potential spoilers...but more a question of the species," he said. "We are dealing with smaller groups which are really poised to have a devastating impact on soft targets," he added, listing U.S.-led forces hunting Taliban and al Qaeda network guerrillas, NATO troops, U.N. officials and aid workers. He said there was a risk that fighters from Chechnya, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries -- who are generally referred to in the country as "Arabs" -- would infiltrate urban areas to attack such targets. ISAF forces change their movement patterns to outwit would-be attackers in Kabul, he said, but there was "no 100 percent security against suicide bombers" and peacekeepers could not hide behind heavy armour because interface with local people was at the heart of their mission. He said the 19-nation alliance would have to provide more troops and equipment such as helicopters and planes to protect the four or five new military-civilian reconstruction teams NATO plans to set up in Afghan provinces by the middle of this year. "The political price we would otherwise have to pay would be to turn Afghanistan back to a safe ground for...lawlessness, warlordism, illegal economic activities and terrorism: ultimately into a country exporting instability well beyond its borders," he said.
Posted by: Dan Darling || 02/12/2004 12:45:05 AM || Comments || Link || [336073 views] Top|| File under:

#1 
fighters from Chechnya, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries

They are fighting to expel all the foreigners from Afghanistan.
Posted by: Mike Sylwester || 02/12/2004 0:47 Comments || Top||

#2  Re: #1

Not really contridictory. They are trying to expel all the infidels from Dar al-Islam. Country names are unimportant. I would not be surprised if the jihadis scoff at the Western idea of nation-states altogether.
Posted by: Douglas || 02/12/2004 6:35 Comments || Top||

#3  I doubt very much if they scoff at the thought of hard steel penetrating their very soft bodies though - unless it's self-inflicted.
Posted by: Old Patriot || 02/12/2004 11:27 Comments || Top||


Caucasus
Putin meets with Saakashvili
Georgia’s new president, Mikhail Saakashvili, says he’s pleased with the results of his first visit to Russia as the leader of Georgia. The 36-year-old Georgian met President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday to discuss various issues. Mikhail Saakashvili says he thinks a "period of thaw" is beginning in relations between Georgia and Russia after his meeting with President Putin.
That will be a nice change, probably to the benefit of both countries...
Both leaders expressed satisfaction with the talks, saying it is time for the two nations to overcome difficulties in their relations. The discussion focused on the issues of terrorism and separatist conflicts, especially in Georgia’s region of Abkhazia, which declared its independence from Georgia after a war in 1993. The leaders agreed to restart stalled peace talks aimed at resolving the issue. Georgia has long accused Russia of supporting not just Abkhazia but a second region, South Ossetia, that has also broken away from Georgia. For its part, Moscow says Georgia gives refuge to separatist rebels from the Russian breakaway region of Chechnya, which shares a mountainous border with Georgia. On this issue, Mr. Saakashvili said the two countries had agreed to conduct joint patrols of the border area.
Posted by: Dan Darling || 02/12/2004 12:18:25 AM || Comments || Link || [336068 views] Top|| File under:


Iraq-Jordan
Boomers aiming at Iraqi election process
Back-to-back suicide bombings on Tuesday and Wednesday that killed more than 100 people came as a United Nations delegation was examining whether early elections could be held in Iraq. The message, Iraqi politicians and others here said Wednesday, is unmistakable. "These terrorists want to inflame the area to get the U.N. to give up on the idea of elections," said Wael Abdul Latif, a judge from Basra and a member of the Iraqi Governing Council. "A few weeks ago, things were quiet. But as soon as the delegation arrived, the violence exploded."
Kinda fits a pattern we've seen before, doesn't it?
The United Nations team, which arrived over the weekend, has disclosed little about which way it is leaning: to push for elections, or to stick to the American plan for a caucus-style selection process for Iraq’s first democratic government, which is to take power by June 30. Whatever the attacks’ effect on the United Nations team, the Iraqi people seem unbowed. In the past 10 days, more than 200 people have been killed in suicide strikes, the most blood shed in such a short period since the insurgency started. "The guys getting killed were just ordinary people who wanted a job," said Abdul Kadem Jassim, a deputy interior minister. "If the terrorists are trying to win converts, this will only do the opposite."

On Tuesday, the victims were aspiring policemen, blown apart while waiting in line outside a police station south of Baghdad. Wednesday it was dozens of young men shivering in the rain in front of an army recruitment center in central Baghdad. "I want to wear our uniform," said Raid Abdul Zahara, who was cut on the head by shrapnel and narrowly escaped death. Asked if he was scared to take such a job now, he shook his bandaged head. "Never," he said.

So far more than 300 policemen have been killed, along with scores of other security troops. Jassim Tahir, a traffic police supervisor, acknowledged his job was like "a dance with death." "But I can’t quit," Mr. Tahir said. "Evil can’t win, can it?"

The men killed Wednesday were standing outside the army recruiting station just after 7:30 a.m. when, police officials said, an explosives-packed Chevrolet Celebrity driven by a masked man careered into the crowd. Though the base is fortified with hundreds of sand-filled barriers, most of the recruits were outside the protected zone. At least 47 people were killed and 50 wounded, said an Iraqi police official, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Kadhum Ibrahim. Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, spokesman for the coalition forces, said "there will be a spike in violence" as the transfer of power gets closer. "We’ve prepared for it," he said. "We’ve planned for it."

General Kimmitt and other American officials said the suicide attacks were part of "the blueprint for terror" that is laid out in an intercepted letter from a suspected associate of Al Qaeda. The full text of the letter, which states that "the enemies are the Americans, the police and the army," was released Wednesday. General Kimmitt said it was too early to tell who was behind Wednesday’s attack but that "Al Qaeda’s fingerprints are all over the Iskandariya bombing." But General Ibrahim told The Associated Press that the engine number of the pickup used in Tuesday’s Iskandariya bombing indicated that it once belonged to an intelligence officer for Saddam Hussein.
We've seen that the two aren't mutually exclusive...
Despite the grim familiarity, the increasing spasms of violence do not seem to have turned Baghdad into a combat zone. At the same time that bombs are ripping into crowds, shops are open, children are walking to school and life goes on. "The killing is continuous," said Muhammad Hassan, an ambulance driver. "What are you going to do?"
Posted by: Dan Darling || 02/12/2004 12:10:17 AM || Comments || Link || [336067 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Jassim Tahir, a traffic police supervisor, acknowledged his job was like "a dance with death." "But I can’t quit," Mr. Tahir said. "Evil can’t win, can it?"

Yes, unfortunately it can. If we and the Iraqis give in because of a few thugs with C-4, it can win.

There is a group in the US that wants exactly this result. They don't care about the ordinary Iraqi in the least. They've only got one agenda: defeat Bush no matter WHAT the cost to a terribly oppressed people.

Posted by: RMcLeod || 02/12/2004 3:47 Comments || Top||

#2  The United Nations team, which arrived over the weekend, has disclosed little about which way it is leaning: to push for elections, or to stick to the American plan

My money is on with the UN lining up right behind Sistani....
Posted by: JerseyMike || 02/12/2004 8:09 Comments || Top||

#3  "If the terrorists are trying to win converts, this will only do the opposite."

Actually the terrorists have already won almost the entire Democratic Party as converts.
Posted by: mhw || 02/12/2004 8:56 Comments || Top||


Afghanistan/South Asia
Anti-kite flying protest tomorrow
The Anti-Kite Flying Democratic Front (AKFDF) has decided to protest kite-flying tomorrow in front of Lahore Press Club, AKFDF Chairman Khawaja Izhar Amratsari said in a press release issued on Wednesday. Mr Amratsari said several social organisations like Anjuman-e-Shehrian, Women’s Anti-Kite Flying Association, Anjuman-e-Mutasareen Patangbazi, Anjuman Zindadilan-e-Lahore and members of some non-government organisations would take part in the demonstrations.
Posted by: Paul Moloney || 02/12/2004 12:07:00 AM || Comments || Link || [336068 views] Top|| File under:

#1  The choice for today's activity is either to do that or to go get a job.
Posted by: Mike Sylwester || 02/12/2004 0:22 Comments || Top||

#2  Paul Moloney---What do you do for yourself to keep your sanity after plying through the Pakistani Nutcase press stories, day after day, week after week? This must be similar to how a psychiatrist must cope when dealing with psychotics every day in a mental hospital.
Posted by: Alaska Paul || 02/12/2004 0:28 Comments || Top||

#3  I drink. A lot.
Posted by: Paul Moloney || 02/12/2004 4:23 Comments || Top||

#4  Can anyone explain what the object to kite flying is based on?
Posted by: Robert Crawford || 02/12/2004 7:10 Comments || Top||

#5  They are going to meet on a windy hilltop and draw attention to their vital cause of preventing human degredation by NOT flying kites. Plus they will grab kite strings from little children and make the kites smash into the ground to teach the children about Allah's true will. What a bunch 'o repressionist retards!

I wonder if these dudes can join some of the LLL parades in Bezerkely and draw attention to the vital cause of preventing idolatry by NOT wearing giant puppet heads?

Robert C.- I have to speculate that they object to it because the sky belongs to Allah or some such 7th century crapistition. Plus kite-flying is pure idleness, just like singing or dancing or free will, so how can it be holy and just?
Posted by: Craig || 02/12/2004 7:23 Comments || Top||

#6  You have to wonder what the anti Kite flying people do for fun.
Ali - well our anti kite gig is done for the day, what do you want to do
Mohammad - let's hang out and not play cards
Posted by: mhw || 02/12/2004 8:43 Comments || Top||

#7  Damn, and I just told the Pakis to go fly a kite...
Posted by: Chuck Simmins || 02/12/2004 8:46 Comments || Top||

#8  You know, on second thought, it would be kinda neat to have a membership card from this group. Do you suppose they accept foreign members? You know, to be an "official" anti kite flying democrat.
Posted by: Chuck Simmins || 02/12/2004 8:48 Comments || Top||

#9  Kites--why do they hate us?
Posted by: Dar || 02/12/2004 9:39 Comments || Top||

#10  Plus kite-flying is pure idleness, just like singing or dancing or free will,

That explains why I've always been a fool for large French War Kites or large freedom kite if you're the sensitive type.
Posted by: Shipman || 02/12/2004 10:35 Comments || Top||

#11  I think I know how I'll respond to this: my daughter and I will have our kites out this weekend. I'll gather a couple of her friends and we'll head out to the park, weather permitting, and get a few kites in the air. We have a nice selection here at home and we can always get another one or two. I like the little acrobatic ones myself; she's partial to the big suckers with huge, colorful tails.

Wonder if we couldn't make this a more national/international response? I'd love to see Rummy and Colin on the Mall some weekend, kite strings in hand, having a blast. Better yet have some kite flying on the White House lawn at the upcoming Easter Egg hunt. Hmmmmm ....
Posted by: Steve White || 02/12/2004 10:49 Comments || Top||

#12  I saw somewhere but can't remember just where, that they objected to kite flying because they were using wire and that led to some decapitations. Don't know if that's true are not, just what I heard.
Posted by: Lil Dhimmi || 02/12/2004 10:50 Comments || Top||

#13  From the Guardian:

Mr Mahmood's officials insisted the ban was motivated purely by concerns of safety. Kite flying in Pakistan is frequently more a competition than a hobby. Flyers pit their kites against each other in skilled attempts to cut their rival's strings. Bets are occasionally laid, and to gain advantage most flyers buy string which has been specially soaked in a ground-glass and occasionally ground-metal paste that hardens to make the string slice like a knife. Some even use wire strings....

But in the crowded streets of Lahore's old city, the kite strings are as much a liability as an entertainment. City officials say at least 45 people have died of kite-related injuries in the past six months. Many of them were young boys whose wire strings hit electrical power lines, causing short circuits. Occasionally motorcyclists are garrotted by fallen wire strings and dozens of kite flyers sustain serious cuts to their fingers.

But others warn there may be a darker side to the decision. Kite flying in Lahore has commonly been associated with the spring festival of Basant, when the city is cloaked in saffron-yellow and crowded with parties, dancing and celebration.

Hardline religious clerics have long railed against Basant, and the kite-flying that accompanies it, as un-Islamic. In a revealing statement presented to the courts in Lahore at the time of the kite ban, Khawaja Mohammad Afzal, the city's legal adviser, wrote: "The use of fire crackers, music and dance on such occasions is un-Islamic."
Posted by: growler || 02/12/2004 11:00 Comments || Top||

#14  Oh, sure! It's for the children!
Posted by: Chuck Simmins || 02/12/2004 11:28 Comments || Top||

#15  Boy, fighting kites in Indonesia was some of the best fun I ever remember. Sure, it created dangers, but doesn't everything? Sounds like Pakistan has a bunch of spoil sports.
Posted by: cingold || 02/12/2004 11:51 Comments || Top||

#16  So let me get this straight, they're not worried about gun sex and falling ammo, but they consider kites too dangerous?
Posted by: Rafael || 02/12/2004 12:06 Comments || Top||


Iraq-Jordan
Irbil boomers were Iraqis
A Kurdish newspaper said Wednesday that Iraqi members of an Al Qaeda-linked group, a Kurd and an Arab, blew themselves up in northern Iraq on February 1, killing at least 105 people. The twin suicide bombing was the deadliest attack in post-war Iraq and was suspected to have been carried out by foreign fighters, possibly linked to Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda network. The pair were named respectively as Abu Bakr Hawleri and Kazem Al-Juburi, alias Abu Turab, by independent newspaper Hawlani, which said they belonged to the Army of Ansar al-Sunna. The Kurd blew himself up in the offices of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Arab in the offices of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), both in the Kurdish city of Arbil, said the newspaper. Each one carried a belt packed with four kilograms (8.8 pounds) of TNT mixed with phosphorus, a highly flammable material, the newspaper said. Ansar al-Sunna last week claimed the twin bombings in a statement posted on an Islamist website. The newspaper said the motive of the attack was to "punish" the two Kurdish secular groups, which control Iraqi Kurdistan, for their alliance with the US-led coalition.

The newspaper said Ansar al-Sunna broke away from the Ansar al-Islam group last October and was led by an Arab whose alias is Abu Abdullah Hasan bin Mahmud. Ansar al-Sunna is more extreme, said the newspaper. The newspaper added that bin Mahmud is the brother of man whose alias is Abdullah Al-Shami, an Ansar al-Islam leader who was killed last year while fighting a US-backed onslaught by the PUK that forced the group out of its enclave near the Iranian border at the end of March last year.
Posted by: Dan Darling || 02/12/2004 12:04:07 AM || Comments || Link || [336073 views] Top|| File under:

#1 
Ansar al-Sunna ... was led by an Arab

Now is not a good time to be an Arab in Kurdistan.
Posted by: Mike Sylwester || 02/12/2004 0:24 Comments || Top||


Israel-Palestine
15 Palestinians Die As Israelis Raid Camp
Updates yesterday's article...
An Israeli crackdown on Palestinian militants erupted into the bloodiest day of fighting in the Gaza Strip in 16 months. Fifteen Palestinians died in the violence and more than 50 were wounded. Islamic Hamas responded Wednesday with an ominous vow of retaliation,
Dire Revenge(tm)!
urging all of its cells throughout Gaza and the West Bank to attack. Similar calls in the past have been followed within days - sometimes hours - by suicide bombings in Israel.
In short - continue as normal.
The stepped-up violence was linked by some to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s proposals for a unilateral pullout from most of Gaza. With many Israelis, including the military’s intelligence chief, concerned such a move might be viewed by Palestinians as a sign of weakness, analysts warned that more military action in the territory could lie ahead... "That is presumably what we saw today and what we will see more of," said Israeli analyst Yossi Alpher. The fiercest fighting took place in the Shajaiyeh neighborhood of Gaza City. Twelve militants, including the son of a prominent Palestinian leader and a senior Hamas activist, were killed and more than 40 were wounded, Palestinian doctors said.
Good shooting.
In a separate raid in the Rafah refugee camp along the Gaza-Egypt border, troops killed three Palestinians, including a militant, as they searched for tunnels used for arms smuggling. The forces demolished three houses and razed citrus and olive groves. The army said it had entered the Gaza City neighborhood to search for militants who fired rockets at nearby Jewish settlements. It said the fighting broke out after militants fired missiles at Israeli tanks. Among the dead were Mohammed Hilles, 18, the son of Ahmed Hilles, the top leader of Yasser Arafat’s Fatah faction in Gaza, and senior Hamas activist Hani Abu Skhaila. The fighting was the deadliest in Gaza since 19 Palestinians were killed in clashes in Khan Younis on Oct. 7, 2002. Later Wednesday, thousands of people marched in funeral processions for some of the militants. Masked men in military-style uniforms carried bodies on stretchers, while others had gun sex fired machine guns into the air and called for revenge™.
Did the bodies walk home afterwards like before?
After the fighting died down, four small rockets were fired into Israel, causing no injuries or damage,
Bad shots all.
the army said. Later, militants fired a mortar at a Jewish settlement in Gaza, badly damaging a house and lightly injuring a settler. The group’s militant wing issued a statement calling on all its cells in the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem to carry out "huge martyrdom operations ... everywhere in Palestine,"
Not a tremor on the suprise meter here...
referring to suicide bombings in the West Bank, Gaza and Israel. Hamas leader Abdel Aziz Rantissi posted a statement on the group’s Web site promising "astounding retaliation."
Dire Revenge!
Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia said the Gaza incursion endangered efforts to revive long-dead-and-cold-stalled peace talks. "We believe that these killings must stop immediately if the peace process is to go forward and bring results," Qureia said in Rome after talks with Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini.
... who promptly fell asleep because he'd heard it so many times before.
Posted by: CrazyFool || 02/12/2004 12:01:18 AM || Comments || Link || [336096 views] Top|| File under:

#1  I messed up. Fred can you file this in the approprate category? Middle East or something?
Posted by: CrazyFool || 02/12/2004 0:08 Comments || Top||

#2  No problem...
Posted by: Fred || 02/12/2004 0:39 Comments || Top||

#3  Was there a car swarm? I love that. Its like ghetto punk. But all kidding aside, hell of a shoot-out. Aziz is promising "astounding retialiations", wonder if he's ready for the backlash to that.
Posted by: Lucky || 02/12/2004 1:05 Comments || Top||

#4  Could this be the lead-in to the Final Clash, where the paleos put all their gunnies on the streets at once, and Israel takes the opportunity to terminate Yasser with extreme prejudice?
Posted by: Rivrdog || 02/12/2004 1:33 Comments || Top||

#5  I think its sinking in with the paleos that they have lost and its only going to get worse. Walls going up. Monthly checks stop coming from Europe and the Gulf. The civil war should be fun to watch!
Posted by: phil_b || 02/12/2004 2:00 Comments || Top||

#6  The intensity of Paleo threats is inversely proportional to their ability to carry out those stated threats.

Yassin still under a pile of matresses in his u/g bunker?

Unless the Paleos get away with something big, it's just a holding action on the part of the IDF while the wall gets built and the PA exchequer dries up.
Posted by: Alaska Paul || 02/12/2004 15:13 Comments || Top||

#7  Hey, Ahmed, how's the cement business doing these days?
Posted by: tu3031 || 02/12/2004 23:08 Comments || Top||



Who's in the News
62[untagged]

Bookmark
E-Mail Me

The Classics
The O Club
Rantburg Store
The Bloids
The Never-ending Story
Thugburg
Gulf War I
The Way We Were
Bio

Merry-Go-Blog











On Sale now!


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.
Click here for more information

Meet the Mods
In no particular order...
Steve White
Seafarious
tu3031
badanov
sherry
ryuge
GolfBravoUSMC
Bright Pebbles
trailing wife
Gloria
Fred
Besoeker
Glenmore
Frank G
3dc
Skidmark

Two weeks of WOT
Thu 2004-02-12
  Abizaid Unhurt in Attack, Press Disappointed
Wed 2004-02-11
  Another 50 killed in Iraq car boom
Tue 2004-02-10
  Car Bomb At Iraq Cop Shop, 50 Dead
Mon 2004-02-09
  Zarqawi letter sez insurgency failing
Sun 2004-02-08
  Seven nations tied to Pak nuke ring
Sat 2004-02-07
  Abdullah Shami's car helizapped
Fri 2004-02-06
  40 dead in Moscow subway boom
Thu 2004-02-05
  Surprise! Abdul Qadeer pardoned!
Wed 2004-02-04
  Bacha Khan Zadran snagged
Tue 2004-02-03
  Ricin in the mail
Mon 2004-02-02
  AQ Khan admits to leaking secrets
Sun 2004-02-01
  Saddam to Be Handed Over to Special Court
Sat 2004-01-31
  Pak sacks Abdul Qadeer Khan
Fri 2004-01-30
  Death for Japan cult chemist
Thu 2004-01-29
  At least 10 dead in Jerusalem suicide bombing

Better than the average link...



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.
54.205.179.155
Help keep the Burg running! Paypal:
(0)    (0)    (0)    (0)    (0)