You can relax now, Fred
An armed Iranian opposition group operating northeast of Baghdad was negotiating its surrender Friday after the U.S. military ordered it to lay down weapons or face destruction, American officials said. The Mujahedeen Khalq, which operated for years from Saddam Hussein's Iraq in its efforts to undermine Iran's religious regime, was surrounded by U.S. forces outside this town northeast of Baghdad, said Lt. Col. Robert Daldivia of the U.S. Army's 4th Infantry Division. "As far as I know, they are agreeing to capitulate at this time," said Capt. Josh Felker, public affairs officer of the 4th Infantry's Warhorse Brigade. He said Gen. Ray Odierno, the 4th Infantry's commander, was in the Mujahedeen Khalq's main camp, Camp Ashraf, to negotiate the surrender. U.S. military talking points about the negotiations, obtained by The Associated Press, gave the following guidance: "MEK forces will be destroyed or compelled to surrender, leading to disarmament and detention." Short and to the point, guess we kept State out of it.
Not an awful lot of points to talk about there...
Under the U.S. orders, the Mujahedeen Khalq must disarm, though they can keep their personal arms temporarily for self-defense. They will be barred from manning checkpoints on the roads around Baqubah and must go to containment areas, Felker said. Thousands of Mujahedeen Khalq are believed to be in the area, although the United States says it is unsure of the exact number.
Well, grab all you can...
The Mujahedeen Khalq, or People's Warriors, operated in prewar Iraq with Saddam Hussein's blessing. They have several camps near Baqubah, 45 miles from Baghdad. U.S. troops said they had been prepared for full-scale combat before the negotiations began. The United States signed a truce on April 15 with the Mujahedeen Khalq, allowing the group to keep its weapons to defend itself against Iranian-backed attacks. At the time, the U.S. State Department called the agreement "a prelude to the group's surrender." "This has been in the works for a while. The cease-fire was a stepping stone to the capitulation agreement," Felker said. That's what I thought.
But reports of roadblock confrontations in recent days suggested the group had continued playing an active, armed role in the region — a challenge to the United States' authority as Iraq's military occupier. U.S. military commanders "don't want two armed forces in the area," Felker said. Nope
Bust 'em up, put 'em out of business, turn the head cheeses over to Iran for disposition, and mark 'em off the list of terrorist organizations.
Posted by: Steve ||
05/09/2003 10:50:14 AM ||
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In two articles that appeared on the liberal website Elaph, Tunisian intellectual Al-'Afif Al-Akhdar analyzed and criticized dominant values in the Arab world. Al-Akhdar, currently residing in Paris, was a regular columnist for the London Arabic-language daily Al-Hayat, but was fired at the instruction of the paper's owner, Saudi Prince Khaled ibn Sultan, for saying during a talk show on Al-Jazeera that Saudi practices such as amputating body parts render the regime "barbaric." In the first article, Al-Akhdar sets out the logic and goal of the attack on Baghdad, as "told" by the missiles as they fall on the city; in the second, he looks at deeply rooted thought patterns and values in the Arab world. The following are excerpts from the two articles:
I've only excerpted a few paragraphs. The entire article is worth reading. We sometimes forget that not every Muslim is afflicted with the myopia of tribalism...
"The policy of vengeance that prevails today, especially among the influential elites in Palestine, Syria and Iraq, has banished any rational policy from their domestic decision making. In their domestic policy, these elites dismiss all public discussion. In their foreign policy, they refuse to negotiate. This is how these elites increase the likelihood of implosion [i.e. domestic strife] and war. It [also] explains their careening from one domestic outbreak [of violence] into the next, and from one destructive war into the next, much fiercer war" ...
"The cult of arming with WMD drove Saddam Hussein into delirious... decisions. [Such as the decisions] to strike the Kurds with chemical weapons; shoot tear gas at demonstrators â [tear gas] produced from aflatoxins that cause liver cancerâŠ; attack Iran with chemical weapons; invade Kuwait; in addition to wasting - over 35 years - his country's material and human resources on the altar of his vengeful obsession and insane passion for martial victory. Currently, Iraq's resources, which include the second largest oil reserves in the world, qualify this country, economically and scientifically, to be the Japan of the Arab world. [Instead, it] became one of the poorest, most despotic and bloodiest countries in the world."
"The fanatical and neurotic tenacity of the [policy of] 'all or nothing' and martial victory are, without a doubt [the source] of Hamas's program to 'liberate Palestine to the last grain of earth and to restore it as a Waqf [religious endowment] for all the world's Muslims' â and [the factor] behind [Hamas's] insane refusal to accept a Palestinian state in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and east Jerusalem. And what was the result, after the suicidal operations had failed to fulfill this impossible aim? Hamas's spiritual leader, Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, appealed to Israeli PM Sharon for a 10-year truce [Hudna], in the aftermath of which [the circumstances would be reassessed]."
"This kind of suicidal policy was also behind Yasser Arafat's unexpected shift from promising negotiations to futile armed struggle and Intifada, that has proven no less futile. And why is that? It was because Chairman Arafat envied Hizbullah's success at 'expelling' the Israeli army from the Israeli security zone [in Lebanon]. Overnight, he decided to shift from negotiating with to expelling the occupying Israeli army, and unilaterally declaring a fully sovereign Palestinian state without [paying] the price of recognizing Israel â as Egypt and Jordan had already done. And what was the outcome of this vengeful and suicidal decision? Unprecedented self-punishment: The occupying army [Israel] returned to 42% of the territories liberated through negotiation. By the same logic, Chairman Arafat turned down president Clinton's proposal to regain 97% of the occupied territories, with a promise of $40 billion to resettle the Palestinian refugees within the promised Palestinian state. And what was the outcome of this decision, which was in disregard of any consideration of Palestinian national interest for establishing a homeland and a lasting state? The outcome is that Arafat and his people are today in grave danger."
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
05/09/2003 9:23:01 AM ||
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Israeli occupation forces entered the village of Yamon in the early hours of Friday morning and arrested a number of Palestinian activists after imposing a curfew on the village. The ordeal of the village lasted until noon when the Israeli occupation forces withdrew from the village leaving many searched homes in a state of devastation. Amongst those arrested were two brothers Naseem Mohammed Sadiq (24 years) and his brother Wasseem (20 years). Those arrested were taken to an undisclosed location.
My guess it was to the calaboose...
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
05/09/2003 1:53:40 PM ||
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Sierra Leone's president has confirmed that the man killed by Liberian troops on Tuesday was the feared warlord Sam Bockarie. President Ahmed Tejan Kabbah said the Sierra Leonean ambassador to Monrovia had positively identified the body - after initially casting doubt on the identity of the corpse. Mr Kabbah said the body would be inspected by the International Committee of the Red Cross before being flown back to Sierra Leone. Mr Bockarie was wanted for alleged war crimes during Sierra Leone's civil war, including murder and cutting limbs off civilians. Sierra Leone's tribunal initially disputed Liberia's report of Mr Bockarie's death, accusing its president, Charles Taylor, of harbouring the rebel leader. "We will not be satisfied until the body is returned to Sierra Leone as we still want... to conduct a forensic examination and to make a positive identification," said Alan White, the court's chief investigator. Smart move, too many of these guys are reported killed and come back. After you are sure it's him, I'd drive a stake thru his heart and burn the body. You can't be too careful.
Posted by: Steve ||
05/09/2003 10:28:23 AM ||
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Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, sat on the board of a company which three years ago sold two light water nuclear reactors to North Korea - a country he now regards as part of the "axis of evil" and which has been targeted for regime change by Washington because of its efforts to build nuclear weapons. Rumsfeld 2000: director of a company which wins $200m contract to sell nuclear reactors to North Korea
Rumsfeld 2002: declares North Korea a terrorist state, part of the axis of evil and a target for regime change
Mr Rumsfeld was a non-executive director of ABB, a European engineering giant based in Zurich, when it won a $200m (£125m) contract to provide the design and key components for the reactors. The current defence secretary sat on the board from 1990 to 2001, earning $190,000 a year. He left to join the Bush administration. The reactor deal was part of President Bill Clinton's policy of persuading the North Korean regime to positively engage with the west. Bush vs Clinton playing south and north pole?
Guess you try one thing, and if that doesn't work, you try another, huh? Oh, and a "non-executive director" doesn't have decision-making powers. Companies pay them for their contacts within the wider world. Probably Rumsfeld's contacts provided $190,000 a year in value while he was a non-executive director...
The sale of the nuclear technology was a high-profile contract. ABB's then chief executive, Goran Lindahl, visited North Korea in November 1999 to announce ABB's "wide-ranging, long-term cooperation agreement" with the communist government. The company also opened an office in the country's capital, Pyongyang, and the deal was signed a year later in 2000. Despite this, Mr Rumsfeld's office said that the defence secretary did not "recall it being brought before the board at any time".
It may not have been. Or it may not have been brought before the full board...
In a statement to the American magazine Newsweek, his spokeswoman Victoria Clarke said that there "was no vote on this". A spokesman for ABB told the Guardian yesterday that "board members were informed about the project which would deliver systems and equipment for light water reactors". Just months after Mr Rumsfeld took office, President George Bush ended the policy of engagement and negotiation pursued by Mr Clinton, saying he did not trust North Korea, and pulled the plug on diplomacy. Pyongyang warned that it would respond by building nuclear missiles. A review of American policy was announced and the bilateral confidence building steps, key to Mr Clinton's policy of detente, halted. By January 2002, the Bush administration had placed North Korea in the "axis of evil" alongside Iraq and Iran. If there was any doubt about how the White House felt about North Korea this was dispelled by Mr Bush, who told the Washington Post last year: "I loathe [North Korea's leader] Kim Jong-il."
Since North Korea threatens to destroy us in a "sea of fire," I'd say he has good reason to do so. I'm not too fond of Kimmie, myself...
The success of campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq have enhanced the status of Mr Rumsfeld in Washington. Two years after leaving ABB, Mr Rumsfeld now considers North Korea a "terrorist regime â teetering on the verge of collapse" and which is on the verge of becoming a proliferator of nuclear weapons. During a bout of diplomatic activity over Christmas he warned that the US could fight two wars at once â a reference to the forthcoming conflict with Iraq. After Baghdad fell, Mr Rumsfeld said Pyongyang should draw the "appropriate lesson".
So he's been successful in the position he holds in the government, his opinions have been vindicated, and NKor would do well to draw the appropriate lessons. Where's the beef here?
Critics of the administration's bellicose language on North Korea say that the problem was not that Mr Rumsfeld supported the Clinton-inspired diplomacy and the ABB deal but that he did not "speak up against it". "One could draw the conclusion that economic and personal interests took precedent over non-proliferation," said Steve LaMontagne, an analyst with the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation in Washington.
Mr. LaMontagne is being a little too precious here. The actions taken at one point were legal and appropriate. The actions taken at the second point were legal and appropriate. They were two separate points...
Many members of the Bush administration are on record as opposing Mr Clinton's plans, saying that weapons-grade nuclear material could be extracted from the type of light water reactors that ABB sold. Mr Rumsfeld's deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, and the state department's number two diplomat, Richard Armitage, both opposed the deal as did the Republican presidential candidate, Bob Dole, whose campaign Mr Rumsfeld ran and where he also acted as defence adviser. One unnamed ABB board director told Fortune magazine that Mr Rumsfeld was involved in lobbying his hawkish friends on behalf of ABB.
Those are the contacts we were discussing earlier...
Well well well, anti WMD eyh?
The Clinton package sought to defuse tensions on the Korean peninsula by offering supplies of oil and new light water nuclear reactors in return for access by inspectors to Pyongyang's atomic facilities and a dismantling of its heavy water reactors which produce weapons grade plutonium. Light water reactors are known as "proliferation-resistant" but, in the words of one expert, they are not "proliferation-proof". The type of reactors involved in the ABB deal produce plutonium which needs refining before it can be weaponised. One US congressman and critic of the North Korean regime described the reactors as "nuclear bomb factories".
Lemme get this straight: we replace heavy water reactors, which produce weapons-grade plutonium, with light water reactors, which are "proliferation-resistant," and Mr. Congressman-who-has-no-name describes the latter as "nuclear bomb factories"? I'll bet it hurt when he was dropped on his head...
North Korea expelled the inspectors last year and withdrew from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty in January at about the same time that the Bush administration authorised $3.5m to keep ABB's reactor project going.
Y'mean the ones that're "proliferation-resistant"?
North Korea is thought to have offered to scrap its nuclear facilities and missile programme and to allow international nuclear inspectors into the country. But Pyongyang demanded that security guarantees and aid from the US must come first. Mr Bush now insists that he will only negotiate a new deal with Pyongyang after the nuclear programme is scrapped. Washington believes that offering inducements would reward Pyongyang's "blackmail" and encourage other "rogue" states to develop weapons of mass destruction. I left this board which I am still intend to do, but these two faced policies of the US are so stinky, since nobody would posted this one I did.
Fred, since this is one of the posts you don't like you you are free to delete it.
This is one of the worst pieces of reporting we've seen here since Nic Robertson reported that something happened in northern Afghanistan, but he had no details, a year and a half ago. As a smear attempt, it's magnificent in its clumsiness, though amateurish in its use of innuendo. Pretty poor effort, I'd say.
Posted by: Murat ||
05/09/2003 5:04:50 AM ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
