North Korea has said it won't return to six-way talks on its nuclear weapons programme unless the United States lifts its sanctions on North Korean companies. "Is there anything to do if the United States does not change its position?" said Song Il Hyuck, a member of the North Korean delegation at a security conference in Tokyo.
Song said North Korea had never been opposed to the six-way talks on halting its nuclear programme. He said it was ready to return to talks if the US lifts financial sanctions imposed on North Korean companies for alleged illegal activities. North Korean officials have no plans to hold bilateral meetings with their US counterparts, but would oblige if there was a request, Song said.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/09/2006
21:07 ||
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IRAQI Kurdish leaders have officially informed the main Shiite Alliance that their rejection of Ibrahim al-Jaafari as their nomination for prime minister is final, political sources said today.
The Alliance, under growing pressure to nominate a replacement to break a deadlock over a unity government, is expected to inform other political blocs tomorrow of their final decision on Mr Jaafari, the sources said.
CARACAS, Venezuela - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said the U.S. ambassador was "provoking the Venezuelan people" and threatened Sunday to expel the American diplomat, whose convoy was chased by pro-government protesters.
"I'm going to throw you out of Venezuela if you continue provoking the Venezuelan people," Chavez said in a nationally televised speech addressed to U.S. Ambassador William Brownfield.
Start packing your bags Mister, if you keep on provoking us, start packing your bags, because Ill kick you out of here, Chavez said in the speech, part of his regular Sunday television program.
Venezuela's acting foreign minister on Saturday condemned the crowd of protesters for pelting Brownfield's car with eggs and tomatoes, but suggested that Brownfield is partially responsible for failing to advise authorities of his travel plans in order to avert such problems.
Chavez's more incendiary comments came after Washington warned of "severe diplomatic consequence" if a similar incident repeats itself.
Relations between Chavez and Washington have fast deteriorated as the two governments spar over his close ties to Cuba and Iran, and U.S. officials portray the Venezuelan leader as a threat to regional democracy.
He's a punk who's blackmailing us for oil; I hope we are doing more than just diplomacy, we need to embarrass this guy in his own backyard, divide divide divide!
Hey, Hug, baby! Simply withdrawing our embassy personnel's too good for you. Let's withdraw our oilfield workers, shut down the taps, sabotage the taps, and turn off the US money tap as well.
There's a couple other countries the US could turn to for replacement supplies of Venezuelan crude - plus we got that and a buttload more in our own ANWR, Rocky Mts, Gulf Coast, West Coast, and a couple other regions!
Three _hundred_ years estimated supply in Rocky Mt oil shale alone.
_WE_ do not need _you_, Hugo.
But _you_ definitely will not survive without US cash.
Tehran, Iran, Apr. 09 Iran said on Sunday that it shot down an unmanned spy plane from Iraq in the south of the country. This plane had lifted off from Iraq and was busy filming the border regions, the semi-official daily Jomhouri Islami wrote.
The planes structural markings and systems have given officials information, the report added, without elaborating. There have been reports that the United States has been secretly sending unmanned surveillance planes into Iran to gather intelligence about the countrys nuclear sites.
Wonder if they used a super-secret, radar-evading slingshot to bring it down?
#1
Well, ya...I'm sure we are buzzing all over these sites.
Posted by: Captain America ||
04/09/2006 15:22
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How much they might learn from a downed UAV very much depends on which model they got. The high-altitude Global Hawks have some of the most sophisticated sensor systems, but are beyond their reach so far as I know. OTOH if they got a Shadow, which is a tactical level asset, much of the sensors are commercial off-the-shelf equipment.
And of course there are the platoon level small UAVs, but I doubt they would be sent across the border except during actual operations - in which case our troops would be there too.
So, most likely the "information" claim is BS, other than to help them price-shop on the internet for digital videocams .....
#3
Most likely it was a shadow (or equivalent). They're useful as heck, but not the most mecanicaly or electronicly reliable. Wound up crashing almost all the airfraimes we had by the end of tour. We lost one (jul-aug) while near the Iranian border last year. Later (nov 2005?) the MMs anounced the capture of a "spy plane". From the published photos, I think it was that one.
Anyhoo, I would chalk this up to another shadow (or its equivalent) biting the dust. Write off another $20,000. Guess AAI gets another order.
Posted by: N guard ||
04/09/2006 16:01
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#7
Can't we put plastique on board, and blow them by radio signal if we lose them over hostile territory?
No point to it, really. W/O a live pilot to put on "trial", nobody realy cares about the hardware. The most expensive part of the uav is the Flir camera, and it is usualy crunched beyond recoverability/exploitability by the crash landing. The airframe and engine is just a "toy" that is available to any wealthy hobbyist. The electronix are usualy cheep.
Remember, all the realy classified stuff is either in the control van in (I hope) friendly territory, or is electronic info on a memory chip that will go away when power is lost.
Most of the time, these brigade/division level uavs are flying over friendly troops, and any destruct charge is more of a hazard than a help. It would be an administrative nightmare (time, training and $$$) to maintain.
Lastly, most of these small to mid size uavs simply do not have the spare payload to carry a 10-20 lbs charge. I, for one would rather have any spare payload go into fuel for more endurance, or as a distant second, some backup systems to insure the damn thing will actualy make it home if something breaks.
Posted by: N guard ||
04/09/2006 18:18
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#8
Every ounce of explosives put aboard means one less ounce of sensors/fuel/batteries etc.
Not worth it. Let 'em find our wrecks. It's not like they can use them against us.
#9
CT - possibly, but there is a pretty severe tradeoff between weight and time in the air. Unless the sensor systems are quite advanced and classified, it's more advantageous to be able to fly them longer most of the time than to blow them up if damaged. At least for the fixed wing UAVs, it's the sensors and perhaps some basic avionics that potentially are of great intel interest but as I noted, with the Shadows much of the payload is off the shelf stuff.
Sen. John Kerry, Massachusetts Democrat, insists on proving that he can't be trusted. He made his political debut in 1970, joining the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, then accused American troops of war crimes in Vietnam -- and tried to deny he had done so.
During his ill-fated 2004 presidential campaign, Mr. Kerry's hyperventilated claims to be a war hero were called into question by his own comrades. Now, the Democrat defeatist has published his formula for victory in Iraq: just quit.
In a 600-word screed published this week by the New York Times, Mr. Kerry lays out his vision for the future. Unfortunately, like so much else in the Massachusetts liberal's political life, it is full of flim-flam, half-truths, distortions and outright falsehoods. A few examples based on my seven trips covering U.S. forces in Iraq for Fox News:
Mr. Kerry: "Now we find our troops in the middle of an escalating civil war."
Reality: No U.S. or Iraqi official has described what's happening as a civil war. In fact, all have categorically disagreed with such a characterization. Only the "Blame America First" crowd and the mainstream media broadcasting from balconies in the green zone depict it as such.
Mr. Kerry: "Half of the service members listed on the Vietnam Memorial Wall died after America's leaders knew our strategy would not work."
Reality: Those of us who are unashamed of our service know we didn't lose the war on the battlefields of Vietnam -- but in the corridors of power in Washington.
Mr. Kerry: "No American soldier should be sacrificed because Iraqi politicians refuse to resolve their ethnic and political differences."
Reality: American troops in Iraq aren't being wounded and killed because of Iraqi politicians -- but by terrorists who refuse to participate in the political process.
Mr. Kerry: "Iraqi politicians should be told that they have until May 15 to put together an effective unity government or we will immediately withdraw our military."
Reality: Every soldier, sailor, airman, Guardsman and Marine I have interviewed in Iraq -- from Gen. George W. Casey down to riflemen on patrol believe a withdrawal deadline is a formula for disaster.
Mr. Kerry: "If Iraq's leaders succeed in putting together a government, then we must agree on another deadline: a schedule for withdrawing American combat forces by year's end."
Reality: Now there's a real incentive. If you don't do as we say, we'll pull out immediately. If you do as we want -- we'll still pull out 225 days later.
Mr. Kerry: "We must immediately bring the leaders of the Iraqi factions together at a Dayton Accords-like summit meeting."
Reality: Show us the list of "diplomats" who would negotiate with Abu Musab Zarqawi and his ilk.
Mr. Kerry: "To increase the pressure on Iraq's leaders, we must redeploy American forces to garrisoned status."
Reality: U.S. troop leaders -- and Iraqi officials agree the place to put the pressure is on the terrorists doing all in their power to prevent formation of a democratic government.
Mr. Kerry: "Special operations against al Qaeda and other foreign terrorists in Iraq should be initiated only on hard intelligence leads."
Reality: That's what's being done now, Mr. Kerry.
Mr. Kerry: "We will defeat al Qaeda faster when we stop serving as its best recruitment tool."
Reality: As the September 11 attacks proved, just being the home of the brave and the land of the free, makes America al Qaeda's best "recruitment tool." It was that way before Iraq -- and it will stay that way much longer if we turn tail and run.
Mr. Kerry: "An exit from Iraq will also strengthen our hand in dealing with the Iranian nuclear threat.... "
Reality: How?
Mr. Kerry: "... and allow us to repair the damage of repeated deployments, which flag officers believe has strained military readiness and morale."
Reality: If morale is suffering, why is the re-enlistment rate among combat-committed units (average 106 percent) at unprecedentedly high levels?
Mr. Kerry's half-witted harangue has attracted considerable attention in the media. It is widely circulated in the Islamic press. But it's no formula for success. It should instead be described as a plan to abandon ship.
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/09/2006
14:46 ||
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#1
I should've HT'd Powerline for the referral
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/09/2006 15:01
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#2
It should be pointed out that John Kerry once served in Vietnam.
#5
#2: "It should be pointed out that John Kerry once served in Vietnam."
It should also be pointed out that J F'ing K was a TRAITOR during the Vietnam war.
And he hasn't changed a bit. >:-(
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
04/09/2006 22:08
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Puts things in perspective. No matter how mad I get at Bush and the GOP (and right now I'm seething like a Paleostinian) - it's STILL better than having that treasonous idiot Kerry in the White House.
The Iranian president better sober up and do some cool reckoning.
We are now acquainted with the familiar scenario: Iran is supposedly poised to become another disaster like Iraq. The United States, bruised in Iraq, needs redemption, and so will either press onto Teheran in its vainglorious imperial ambitions, or seek to direct attention away from Iraq by conjuring up another dragon to slay.
The Left further alleges that, once more, we favor preemption, wish to attack an Islamic country, will act unilaterally, and will sex up the intelligence to construct a casus belli about mythical weapons of mass destruction. The result is that the mere idea of preemption in Iran is just too messy even to contemplate, so we may end up timidly outsourcing the problem to others. That is the general critique of our Iranian policy.
Meanwhile, amid that conundrum, the Iranians are engaged in a three-part strategy to obtain nuclear weapons. First, they conduct military exercises, showing off novel weapons systems with purportedly exotic capabilities, while threatening to unleash terror against global commerce and the United States. It may be a pathetic and circus-like exercise born of desperation, but the point of such military antics is to show the West there will be some real costs to taking out Iranian nuclear installations.
Second, Iranians simultaneously send out their Westernized diplomats to the U.N. and the international media to sound sober, judicious, and aggrieved pleading that a victimized Iran only wants peaceful nuclear energy and has been unfairly demonized by an imperialistic United States. The well-spoken professionals usually lay out all sorts of protocols and talking-points, all of which they will eventually subvert except the vacuous ones which lead nowhere, but nevertheless appeal to useful Western idiots of the stripe that say Israel has a bomb, so lets be fair.
Third, they talk, talk, talk with the Europeans, Chinese, Russians, Hugo Chavez, anyone and everyone, and as long as possible in order to draw out the peace-process and buy time in the manner of the Japanese militarists of the late 1930s, who were still jawing about reconciliation on December 7, 1941, in Washington.
During this tripartite approach, the Iranians take three steps forward, then one back, and end up well on their way to acquiring nuclear weapons. Despite all the passive-aggressive noisemaking, they push insidiously onward with development, then pause when they have gone too far, allow some negotiations, then are right back at it. And we know why: nuclear acquisition for Iran is a win-win proposition.
If they obtain an Achaemenid bomb and restore lost Persian grandeur, it will remind a restless population that the theocrats are nationalists after all, not just pan-Islamic provocateurs. A nuclear Iran can create all sorts of mini-crises in the Gulf on a far smaller scale than Saddams invasion of Kuwait which could spike oil prices, given the omnipresence of the Iranian atomic genie. The Persian Gulf, given world demand for oil, is a far more fragile landscape than in 1991.
The Islamic world lost their Middle Eastern nuclear deterrent with the collapse of the Soviet Union no surprise, then, that we have not seen a multilateral conventional attack on Israel ever since. But with a nuclear Islamic Iran, the mullahs can claim that a new coalition against Israel would not be humiliated or at least not annihilated when it lost since the Iranians could always, Soviet-like, threaten to go nuclear. There are surely enough madmen in Arab capitals who imagine that, at last, the combined armies of the Middle East could defeat Israel, with the guarantee that a failed gambit could recede safely back under an Islamic nuclear umbrella.
Lastly, Iran can threaten Israel and U.S. bases at will, in hopes of getting the same sort of attention and blackmail subsidies it will shortly obtain from the Europeans, who likewise are in missile range. All failed states want attention who, after all, would be talking about North Korea if it didnt have nukes? So, in terms of national self-interest, it is a wise move on the theocracys part to acquire nuclear weapons, especially when there is no India on the border to play a deterrent role to an Iran in the place of Pakistan.
There are only two slight problems with this otherwise brilliant maneuvering: George Bush and the government of Israel. Conventional wisdom might suggest a chastised president is only showing the preemption card to play the bad cop alternative to the Europeans. Pundits also point to George Bushs low polls to illustrate how straitjacketed the president is in his options, as Iraq, Katrina, and illegal immigration sap away his strength.
Again, Im not so sure. Low polls work both ways. Is an advisor likely to whisper to a second-term Mr. Bush, Be careful about preemption in Iran, or your approval rating polls might sink from 40 to 35?
Moreover, who knows what a successful strike against Iranian nuclear facilities might portend? We rightly are warned of all the negatives further Shiite madness in Iraq, an Iranian land invasion into Basra, dirty bombs going off in the U.S., smoking tankers in the Straits of Hormuz, Hezbollah on the move in Lebanon, etc. but rarely of a less probable but still possible scenario: a humiliated Iran is defanged; the Arab world sighs relief, albeit in private; the Europeans chide us publicly but pat us on the back privately; and Iranian dissidents are energized, while theocratic militarists, like the Argentine dictators who were crushed in the Falklands War, lose face. Nothing is worse for the lunatic than when his cheap rhetoric earns abject humiliation for others.
Finally, in a post-September 11 world, no American president wants to leave a nuclear Iran for his successor to deal with especially when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the one in control of the nukes and promising a jihad if confronted, is probably a former American hostage taker and terrorist.
The president still believes, as do many others, that the removal of Saddam was necessary, and that Iraq will still emerge as a consensual society. If he leaves office after birthing democracies in lieu of the Taliban and Saddam Hussein, and establishing that the region is free of nuclear weapons, despite the worst Iranian bullying, his presidency, for all the current hysteria, will be seen by history as a remarkable success.
And then there is Israel. All sane observers hope it is not drawn into this crisis, and for a variety of reasons. The emboldened Iranians count on this. Yet they do not realize the extent of the dilemma that their rhetoric and nuclear brinkmanship force on an Israeli president. To do nothing, a mere 60 years after the Holocaust, would imply three assumptions on the part of an Israeli leadership wiping us off the map is just theocratic rhetoric; if the Iranians ever do get the bomb, they wont use it; and if they use it, it wont be against us.
Those are, in fact, three big ifs and no responsible Israeli can take the chance that he presided over a second holocaust and the destruction of half the worlds surviving Jewry residing in what the radical Islamic world calls a one-bomb state.
History would not see such restraint as sobriety, but rather as criminal neglect tantamount to collective suicide, and would reason: An Israeli prime minister was warned by the president of Iran that he wished to wipe Israel off the map. He was then informed that Iran was close to getting nuclear weapons. And then he did nothing, allowing a radical Islamic regime to gain the means to destroy the Jewish state.
So for all the lunacy of Mr. Ahmadinejad, it is time for him to sober up and do some cool reckoning. He thinks appearing unhinged offers advantages in nuclear poker. And he preens that unpredictability is the private domain of the fanatical believer, who talks into empty wells and uses his powers of hypnosis to ensure his listeners cannot blink.
Iran, of course, is still an underdeveloped country. It seems to profess that it is willing to lose even its poverty in order to take out one wealthy Western city in the exchange. But emotion works both ways, and the Iranians must now be careful. Mr. Bush is capable of anger and impatience as well. Of all recent American presidents, he seems the least likely to make decisions about risky foreign initiatives on the basis of unfavorable polls.
Israel is not free from its passions either for there will be no second Holocaust. It is time for the Iranian leaders to snap out of their pseudo-trances and hocus-pocus, and accept that some Western countries are not merely far more powerful than Iran, but in certain situations and under particular circumstances, can be just as driven by memory, history, and, yes, a certain craziness as well.
Ever since September 11, the subtext of this war could be summed up as something like, Suburban Jason, with his iPod, godlessness, and earring, loves to live too much to die, while Ali, raised as the 11th son of an impoverished but devout street-sweeper in Damascus, loves death too much to live. The Iranians, like bin Laden, promulgate this mythical antithesis, which, like all caricatures, has elements of truth in it. But what the Iranians, like the al Qaedists, do not fully fathom, is that Jason, upon concluding that he would lose not only his iPod and earring, but his entire family and suburb as well, is capable of conjuring up things far more frightening than anything in the 8th-century brain of Mr. Ahmadinejad. Unfortunately, the barbarity of the nightmares at Antietam, Verdun, Dresden, and Hiroshima prove that well enough.
So far the Iranian president has posed as someone 90-percent crazy and 10-percent sane, hoping we would fear his overt madness and delicately appeal to his small reservoirs of reason. But he should understand that if his Western enemies appear 90-percent children of the Enlightenment, they are still effused with vestigial traces of the emotional and unpredictable. And military history shows that the irrational 10 percent of the Western mind is a lot scarier than anything Islamic fanaticism has to offer.
So, please, Mr. Ahmadinejad, cool the rhetoric fast before you needlessly push once reasonable people against the wall, and thus talk your way into a sky full of very angry and righteous jets.
Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is the author, most recently, of A War Like No Other. How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War.
More of the same sad story - except for the last paragraph.
An MA 60 passenger plane donated to Zimbabwe by China earlier this year packed up just weeks after it was handed over to Harare amid much pomp and ceremony, sources told ZimOnline. The modified light aircraft, with a carrying capacity of 48 passengers, was given to Zimbabwe last January as a thank you gift to President Robert Mugabe's government after purchasing two similar aircrafts from Beijing in 2005. However, Air Zimbabwe engineers yesterday said the aircraft had failed to "live up to expectations" owing to frequent breakdowns right from the day it was received.
"The final straw came when smoke was noticed from its engine while preparing to take off to Zambia weeks after the official handing over ceremony," said an Air Zimbabwe senior official who spoke on condition he was not named.
Shades of Air Ukraine!
David Mwenga, Air Zimbabwe spokesman, confirmed the Chinese aircraft was grounded but said this was because a spare part ordered from the manufacturer in China had not yet arrived.
He said: "It (Chinese plane) is not yet in operation. We are still waiting for a spare part from China to fit."
The gift plane had been hoped to bolster debt-ridden Air Zimbabwe's fleet for domestic and regional routes. The loss-making and wholly state-owned airline has in recent months failed to service some routes or delayed passengers because planes could not fly due to a lack of spares or fuel, blamed on an acute shortage of foreign currency to pay foreign suppliers.
For example, Air Zimbabwe last Tuesday had to cancel a flight to Cuba after failing to secure adequate fuel supplies. The Cuba flight was scheduled to leave Harare on Tuesday morning and make a brief stop-over in London before proceeding to Havana. It had been specifically chartered by the Ministry of Health and Child Welfare to fly back home Cuban doctors who had completed their attachments at government hospitals.
A famed neoconservative switches sides on the Iraq war -- and all hell breaks loose.
By Francis Fukuyama
SEVEN WEEKS AGO, I published my case against the Iraq war. I wrote that although I had originally advocated military intervention in Iraq, and had even signed a letter to that effect shortly after the 9/11 attacks, I had since changed my mind.
But apparently this kind of honest acknowledgment is verboten. In the weeks since my book came out, I've been challenged, attacked and vilified from both ends of the ideological spectrum. From the right, columnist Charles Krauthammer has accused me of being an opportunistic traitor to the neoconservative cause and a coward to boot. From the left, I've been told that I have "blood on my hands" for having initially favored toppling Saddam Hussein and that my "apology" won't be accepted.
In our ever-more-polarized political debate, it appears that it is now wrong to ever change your mind, even if empirical evidence from the real world suggests you ought to. I find this a strange and disturbing conclusion.
For the record, I did change my mind, but in the year preceding the war not after the invasion. In 2002, I told the London Times that "the use of military power to push [Iraqi democracy] forward is a big roll of the dice. We may not win on this one." On the first anniversary of 9/11, I argued in the Washington Post that we should invade Iraq only with approval from the U.N. Security Council, and in December of that year, I wrote a piece for the Wall Street Journal warning that the project of democratizing Iraq and the Mideast might come to look like empire and that it violated the conservative principle of prudence.
But when my political shift occurred is not important: Even if it had come a year or two later, it would still not have represented a cowardly retreat or an apologia, but a realistic, intellectually honest willingness to face the new facts of the situation.
In my view, no one should be required to apologize for having supported intervention in Iraq before the war. There were important competing moral goods on both sides of the argument, something that many on the left still refuse to recognize. The U.N. in 1999 declared that all nations have a positive "duty to protect, promote and implement" human rights, arguing in effect that the world's powerful countries are complicit in human rights abuses if they don't use their power to correct injustices. The debate over the war shouldn't have been whether it was morally right to topple Hussein (which it clearly was), but whether it was prudent to do so given the possible costs and potential consequences of intervention and whether it was legitimate for the U.S. to invade in the unilateral way that it did.
It was perfectly honorable to agonize over the wisdom of the war, and in many ways admirable that people on the left, such as Christopher Hitchens, George Packer, Michael Ignatieff and Jacob Weisberg, supported intervention. That position was much easier to defend in early 2003, however, before we found absolutely no stocks of chemical or biological weapons and no evidence of an ongoing nuclear weapons program. (I know that many on the left believe that the prewar estimates about Hussein's weapons of mass destruction were all a deliberate fraud by the Bush administration, but if so, it was one in which the U.N. weapons inspectors and French intelligence were also complicit.) It was also easier to support the war before we knew the full dimensions of the vicious insurgency that would emerge and the ease with which the insurgents could disrupt the building of a democratic state.
But in the years since then, it is the right that has failed to come to terms with these uncomfortable facts. The failure to find WMD and to make a quick transition to a stable democracy as well as the prisoner abuse and the inevitable bad press that emerges from any prolonged occupation have done enormous damage to America's credibility and standing in the world. These intangible costs have to be added to the balance sheet together with the huge direct human and monetary costs of the war.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice recently admitted that the United States made numerous tactical errors in Iraq, but she insisted that the basic strategic decision to go to war was still as valid as ever because we foreclosed once and for all the possibility that Iraq would break out of sanctions and restart its WMD programs.
But we now know a lot that throws that fundamental strategic rationale into question.
The Iraq Survey Group and the U.S. military have released hundreds of pages of documents on Iraq's prewar WMD programs showing that, at times, Hussein believed he possessed biological weapons that didn't exist and that, at other times, he led his most senior commanders to believe he had WMD capabilities that he knew were entirely fictitious. His government was so corrupt, incompetent and compartmentalized that it is far from certain that he would have succeeded in building a a nuclear program even if sanctions had been lifted. Nor is it clear that a breakdown of the sanctions regime was inevitable, given an energized United States and the very different political climate that existed after 9/11.
The logic of my prewar shift on invading Iraq has now been doubly confirmed. I believe that the neoconservative movement, with which I was associated, has become indelibly associated with a failed policy, and that unilateralism and coercive regime change cannot be the basis for an effective American foreign policy. I changed my mind as part of a necessary adjustment to reality.
What has infuriated many people is President Bush's unwillingness to admit that he made any mistakes whatsoever in the whole Iraq adventure. On the other hand, critics who assert that they knew with certainty before the war that it would be a disaster are, for the most part, speaking with a retrospective wisdom to which they are not entitled.
Many people have noted the ever-increasing polarization of American politics, reflected in news channels and talk shows that cater to narrowly ideological audiences, and in a House of Representatives that has redistricted itself into homogeneous constituencies in which few members have to appeal to voters with diverse opinions. This polarization has been vastly amplified by Iraq: Much of the left now considers the war not a tragic policy mistake but a deliberate criminal conspiracy, and the right attacks the patriotism of those who question the war.
This kind of polarization affects a range of other complex issues as well: You can't be a good Republican if you think there may be something to global warming, or a good Democrat if you support school choice or private Social Security accounts. Political debate has become a spectator sport in which people root for their team and cheer when it scores points, without asking whether they chose the right side. Instead of trying to defend sharply polarized positions taken more than three years ago, it would be far better if people could actually take aboard new information and think about how their earlier commitments, honestly undertaken, actually jibe with reality even if this does on occasion require changing your mind.
Francis Fukuyama is a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and the author of "America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power and the Neoconservative Legacy.
Look everybody! Francis made us a pinata! (Forgive the missing squiggle mark)
/disclaimer
It is Debka reporting this so salt to your taste!
Mubarak warns Iraq war could spill over into entire Middle East if US withdraws its troops.
Arab intelligence chiefs conferred in Cairo urgently and secretly a few hours earlier on ways to put a stop to Iran's advancing takeover of Iraq. Egyptian intelligence minister Gen. Omar Suleiman called together colleagues of the key Middle East and Gulf Sunni regimes to align positions on the US-Iranian talks opening in Baghdad on Iraq's future. They fear Tehran will make the running because of the ground Washington lost when on April 4 US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice and UK foreign secretary Jack Straw failed to achieve a breakthrough in the stalled Iraqi talks on a national unity government four months after Iraq's general election.
Present at the Cairo conference were the secret services directors of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Jordan, Tunisia, Morocco and Turkey. Syria and Lebanon were absent.
Their concern is that a second Shiite power after Iran will rise in Baghdad. This transformation will boost fundamentalist Islamic forces and the Shiite minorities in all the Arab countries. Hence Mubarak's warning.
#2
While US forces took control of central Najef, they are keeping to Karbalas western suburbs; Sadrs men occupy the center and are building military positions.
#3
looks like sdrs' men would look at each other and wonder why they are being put up as human shields don't it, when ol fat boy sits back and talks shit
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/09/2006 14:49
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#5
I suspect, when push comes to shove next time, we not only intend to kill an s-load of tots, we also intend to police up a large number of Iranian agents.
It would be a spooks dream to first squeeze them dry of any intel, then play all sorts of mind games with them, maybe even turn some, finally to kick the lot back across the border.
The best outcome the Iranians could hope for was to kill them all once these agents stepped foot back in Iran. Otherwise, they could be a nightmare.
More than 50 Muslims who have returned to Germany from fighting in Iraq are under observation by German authorities two months ahead of the football World Cup, Focus news magazine reported.
Citing security forces in Berlin, Focus, in a report made available ahead of Monday's publication, said those in question had been identified by the German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV). The BfV did not want to confirm the report on Saturday.
Germany is imposing strict security at the June 9-July 9 World Cup which brings together 32 teams and is played in 12 cities. The authorities have no direct terrorist threat against the tournament, but will take nothing for granted. The BfV rates Islamism a threat for internal German security.
Focus said that some 300 Muslims overall from Western Europe have fought in Iraq since 2003 against the US-led forces.
The governments policy to cleanse the tribal agencies, especially South and North Waziristan, of hardened extremist Taliban and Al Qaeda elements has drawn increasing flak from various quarters. The political opposition, including the religio-political alliance, the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, says the policy is being pursued under pressure from the United States. The MMA also says there are no foreign elements in the area and the security forces are killing Pakistani tribesmen. On the other hand, non-religious and even some liberal elements want the government to remove the blanket cover on the region. They also want the violence to end and advocate a political dialogue with the leaders of the local people. For good measure the issue of reforms is also brought up time and again. The media, while reporting on incidents of violence and other newsworthy developments, is largely at sea when commenting on the situation. This is partially because there is not much access to the area and partially because large sections of the media are not convinced of the appropriateness of the current policy. This also comes through in talk shows and other programmes on TV.
What is the truth? Lets take the issue of foreigners in the area.
The MMA and other political elements simply lie when they deny the presence of foreign elements in the tribal agencies. Three years of arrests of various Al Qaeda elements from NWFP, Punjab and Sindh should be enough proof of how many of them were around and how many may be still hiding. The army and paramilitary troops have killed dozens in various encounters. Intelligence reports show their presence, as do the accounts of those who have been to the area. General Pervez Musharraf has admitted to foreign presence on many occasions. It is also corroborated by statements of political and assistant political agents and other administration officials. There is no use denying a fact as glaring as that.
As for a political dialogue, again, the truth is that the government has made numerous efforts to engage the local people, tried to cut deals with them, even looked the other way when they have acted in bad faith. But the Taliban penetration in the area is too deep and nothing has really worked. The MMA has played the worst part in the whole affair: its members have resorted to petty and self-serving tactics. While ostensibly allowing the federal troops to operate in the area to save the provincial government the MMA has done everything on the ground to trouble and harass the federal government. The reason is simple: it has sympathy for the Taliban and Al Qaeda elements and it wants to retain the profitable status quo in the region. This has forced it into double-speak and double-dealing. Therefore the MMA is not the militarys partner when it comes to dealing with the tribal agencies because it is part of the problem. Thus while dialogue is important and the government must never fear to talk and negotiate, it is counterproductive to talk and negotiate with terrorists out of fear. And, given the situation, the space for a dialogue is increasingly shrinking.
Have local people died in the clashes? Yes, they have. But such deaths need to be put in context. Most tribesmen are sympathetic to the Taliban and Al Qaeda and are anti-army. All are armed. It is extremely difficult for the army to know exactly who is who when it is fired upon. These people do not wear uniforms and they cannot be identified. It is very easy to criticise the army from afar but those who have any experience of such operations know how difficult it is to control collateral damage in such situations. This is why the government has now directed in some areas within the region that people should not bear arms a policy that is being criticised by some people on the pretext that the NWFP has an entrenched gun culture. The argument that the government should not indulge in violence and the people must not be deprived of their arms because bearing arms is their tradition is ridiculous. This is what Maulana Abdur Rehman, general secretary of JUI-Fazl in North Waziristan told a jirga in Mir Ali on Friday. This is also the misplaced line taken by various commentators when they talk about engaging the tribesmen through traditional channels. Well, the fact is that the government has tried to engage them through jirgas but nothing much has come out of it.
This has reached the point where pro-Taliban local tribesmen have started demanding that the army should withdraw from North Waziristan. These are the same elements that, sometime ago, directed the prayer leaders in the two agencies to enforce the literalist brand of Islam favoured by the Taliban. Now they are clamouring against the armys presence in the area because they cannot move and operate freely with the army around. It is ironic that they are being supported by the moderate political opposition which wants to put the squeeze on General Musharraf for other reasons.
Those who are still not convinced of what the troublemakers are doing would do well to note a statement by tribal militant commander Baitullah Mehsud who said that those killed on Wednesday were mujahideen returning from operations in Afghanistan. Mr Mehsud has also demanded that the army should withdraw from Waziristan. It is part of our deal with the government that forces will be withdrawn, he told the media from an undisclosed location. This should be enough proof that those who want the status quo and those who want to trouble the government are not ready to listen to reason. The war against terrorism is Pakistans war first and then Americas war.
Two Indonesian terrorist suspects have confessed they surveyed some Japanese targets in at least two cities in East Java Province last year as a part of "programs" to rob, kill and kidnap Americans and citizens of U.S.-allied countries, according to a prosecution document obtained Saturday.
Government prosecutors sought 10 years of imprisonment each for the suspects, Ahmad Rafiq Ridho and Joko Trihatmanto, late last month. The two have been on trial since January, and verdicts are expected within a few weeks.
Both have been brought to justice for hiding Malaysia's Noordin Mohammad Top, the most-wanted terrorist suspect in Southeast Asia, and helping him to collect money to finance terrorist activities.
According to the document, Ridho and Trihatmanto met Top on an unspecified date last year in the East Java town of Mojokerto.
During the meeting, Top briefed them on his "programs" to target the interests of the United States and its allies and kidnap and kill Americans and people whose countries are U.S. allies, the document says.
Top later instructed them to survey possible targets for robberies, kidnapping and killings in the provincial capital of Surabaya and towns of Malang and Mojokerto, it alleges.
"They were ordered to investigate whether a mushroom factory in Surabaya belongs to a Japanese national. It was found later that it was not, but it belongs to a Chinese-descent Manadonese," the document says, referring to an ethnicity in North Sulawesi Province.
They were also asked to check whether the locations of the Japanese and U.S. consulate generals in Surabaya were "matched to a map owned by Noordin Mohammad Top and they were," the document adds.
Ridho and Trihatmanto, it says, were ordered to check whether there were citizens of the U.S. and its allies working at the Paiton power plant in Mojokerto, but after checking, they were unsure.
The plant is run by P.T. Paiton Energy Co., which is partly owned by Mitsui & Co. of Japan, General Electric Capital Corp. of the United States and International Power Plc. of Britain.
Ridho and Trihatmanto also checked to confirm whether the general manager of the Novotel Hotel in Surabaya was an Australian, but they failed.
Some malls in Surabaya and Malang, which were not identified in the document, were surveyed to find whether Americans and people of other targeted nationalities shop and eat there, but both terrorist suspects only found ethnic Chinese Indonesians.
They traveled around Surabaya and Malang to find synagogues, but found none.
Ridho is the brother of Fathurrohman al-Ghozi, a high-ranking member of al-Qaida-linked Southeast Asian terrorist network Jemaah Islamiyah, who was shot to death by Philippine troops in 2003.
Jemaah Islamiyah has been blamed for a series of bombing attacks in Southeast Asia, including on the resort island of Bali in 2002 during which 202 people were killed, mostly Western holidaymakers.
He was arrested in April last year for illegally possessing weapons and explosives as well as helping Top to collect money for carrying out his terrorist attacks.
Trihatmanto, 34, was arrested in August last year for his alleged involvement in the bombings in front of the Kauman Great Mosque and the Central Post Office in central Java's Yogyakarta on the 2000 New Year Eve.
Police later found out that the cellular phone vendor had hidden Top at his house in December 2004.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/09/2006
05:59 ||
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Indonesian police found 40 homemade bombs in a graveyard in the eastern part of Central Sulawesi province that has been plagued by religious violence in recent years, officials said Sunday.
The bombs were found at a public cemetery in Poso district town, and consisted of ammonium nitrate, fuses and batteries. They could have been detonated by a timing device, said Poso police chief Lieutenant Colonel Rudi Sufahriadi.
"The bombs could be the remains of devices from the past conflict," Sufahriadi said, adding that the police bomb-squad had deactivated the explosives.
Poso, about 1,650 kilometres northeast of Jakarta, and nearby regions have been wracked by communal clashes between Muslim and Christian communities, leaving more than 1,000 dead in 2000 and 2001.
Religious-related violence eased in 2002 after Muslim and Christian leaders signed a peace accord in late 2001. But sporadic bombings and killings, mostly targeting the Christian community, have still occurred since then.
In late May of last year, two powerful blasts ripped through an open market in the Tentena sub-district of Poso, killing at least 22 people and injuring more than 70.
On late October, unidentified assailants attacked a group of Christian high school girls, beheading three and seriously wounding another.
Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim nation, but Central Sulawesi has roughly equal numbers of Muslims and Christians.
Members of Jemaah Islamiyah, a regional terrorist group blamed for a series of bloody bombings in Jakarta and on Bali island in recent years, are believed to be active in the region.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/09/2006
05:58 ||
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The Chechen sources published an address by Sheikh Abdul-Khalim Sadulaev, the Chechen and Caucasus Mujahiddeen leader. He claimed Mujahiddeen forces had destroyed "dozens of pieces of enemy equipment" on "all fronts of the war" this winter. "The most odious figures in the camp of the national traitors, who were decorated with medals and crosses by their bosses, have also been liquidated," Sadulaev said. "God has helped us to defeat them. The greatest successes have been achieved in Dagestan where the traitors' leaders have been wiped out. Successful combat operations are also being waged in Karachaevo-Cherkessia, although not so actively as in the main areas of the mujahideen's attacks in Ingushetia, Chechnya, Kabardino-Balkaria and Adygeya."
Sadulaev claimed that Mujahiddeen forces had also "performed well" in the Krasnodar and Stavropol territories, carrying out "successful operations there with far-reaching consequences"including one in which, he claimed, 10 members of an OMON special police unit were killed and Mujahiddeen fighters managed to break out of an encirclement after losing only two men. Sadulaev was apparently referring to a shootout in Tukui-Mekteb, a village in Stavropol Krai's Neftekumsky district, last February. The Associated Press reported on February 10 that two days of fighting in Tukui-Mekteb had killed 12 suspected Mujahiddeens and seven policemen.
Sadulaev also claimed that Mujahiddeens in North Ossetia this winter had destroyed all the armored equipment of one federal battalion. He said, however, that he had "no definite information" that Mujahiddeen forces were behind the incident in the Chechen village of Kurchaloiwhich, he claimed, "completely wiped out" a "battalion of Yamadaev's munafiqs [hypocrites]." Sadulaev here was referring to the February 7 explosion at a two-story military barracks of the Vostok Battalion of the federal Defense Ministry's Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU), which is commanded by Sulim Yamadaev. The Emergency Situations Ministry reported on February 8 that 13 people were killed and more than 20 injured in the explosion at the barracks, and some officials said they believed the blast was caused by a gas leak while others said a bomb could not be ruled out.
"We are aware that Kadyrov's criminals are at loggerheads with Yamadaev's men, but until we are in possession of the facts we are unable to say that it was our mujahideen who carried out this operation," Sadulaev said of the Kurchaloi explosion. "When we do get final information, I shall give a further report in my next address about the results of this operation. All we know for certain is that one company of a battalion of Yamadaev's terrorists was completely destroyed. But the only person who could believe that there had been a domestic gas explosion is some amateur dilettante who has no idea that a war is going on or that Putin is in the Kremlin. Nobody else believes such nonsense. The mujahideen know how a gas cylinder explodes, how a shell explodes and how a building collapses when it has been mined on all sides with explosives. The building was mined in such a way that no one could possibly have survived."
Sadulaev suggested that the Kurchaloi blast could have been the result of a bomb placed by pro-Kadyrov forces. "We know that Ramzan Kadyrov has declared the village of Kurchaloi a zone of his influence, that he has trained many munafiqs there and that there is deadly enmity between them and Yamadaev's men," he said. According to Sadulaev, Ramzan Kadyrov and his father Akhmad were behind the March 2003 killing of Sulim Yamadaev's brother, Dzhabrail, who was deputy military commandant of Chechnya. According to press reports at the time, Dzhabrail was killed by an explosion in a house in the village of Dyshne-Vedeno in which he was staying along with three bodyguards. The blast was blamed on the Mujahiddeens, who in fact subsequently took credit for it. Sadulaev, however, noted: "Earlier we said that Dzhabrail Yamadaev had been destroyed by the mujahideen, believing that our fighters had done this. After a mujahideen investigation, it transpired that this had been done by the KadyrovsAkhmad and Ramzanwho paid the FSB 100,000 dollars to carry out this operation. Sulim Yamadaev, who later wiped out four of Dzhabrail Yamadaev's personal bodyguards who were involved in his murder, also knows this. He is afraid of taking vengeance on Ramzan Kadyrov, because he fears his Russian bosses. Otherwise, he would have done something."
Referring to the overall situation in Chechnya and the North Caucasus, Sadulaev said "the fact that Putin has spoken about the end of the war in the North Caucasus and establishing peace" shows that "the Russians have lost all hope of victory"that "they have had enough and want to end the war by any means." The "territory of the war is expanding," he added, "and the Russians are taking desperate steps to prevent this, refuting their own statements about the war being over."
Sadulaev also suggested that the law signed by President Vladimir Putin in early March setting up a National Anti-Terrorism Committee headed by the Federal Security Service director to coordinate the government's response to terrorism showed that the federal authorities are panicking that they are increasingly "losing control of the situation."
Sadulaev compared the new committee to the State Defense Committee that Stalin set up during World War II. "A military committee is not set up in a country where a war has ended," Sadulaev said. "This is a mechanism of power to be created when the need arises to switch all the power and functions of rule by the state and the whole economy over to conditions of war. The Russian leadership's statements about ending the war and creating a State Defense Committee are completely contradictory The policy of the United States in the world and chance that crops up periodically to boost the economy with increased prices for oil are the only things helping them to bear the burden of the war and postpone recognizing their utter defeat."
Sadualev also suggested that Ramzan Kadyrov's moves to establish Islam and apply Sharia law in Chechnya were signs of desperation. "Given the complete failure of ideological work the Russians have begun using the mouths of the munafiqs to talk about establishing Sharia law and Islam in Chechnya," he said. "They are now instructing Kadyrov, who has been expanding his network of shops selling drugs and spirits, to declare a war on narcotics. He is suddenly starting to show concern for the morals of the Chechens and for Sharia law. This absurd policy is being conducted as a result of the defeat of his bosses. It was also carried out in the former times, when the Russians suffered defeat and the national traitors who followed them lost all hope. They used to say: `And we also allow you to follow Islam and to observe Muslim customs.' Such `cunning' speaks to the grave position of enemies."
Sadulaev's statement reiterated his earlier comments about "traitors" who had "switched to the side of the occupation forces" and were now expressing regret. "There are people among them who are helping us, as we saw from an example in Vedeno, where Kadyrov's men killed someone called Mola and his brother because they were helping the mujahideen," Sadulaev said. "We have received reports that they are dead, and if this is so, then may God have mercy on them. This shows that the conscience of these people, whom the Russians and the munafiqs deceived, has begun to be restored. Thanks to God, this is mercy from God! However, it is also true that whatever stories you bring us, we do not need you alongside us. You are people who once turned your backs on the truth, and there is every chance you will do so again. Despite this, we will be glad if just one of those who have realized the bloody deeds of the non-believers and the small bunch of hypocrites returns to the true path. I say this not because we need comrades alongside us. We will not accept you even if you all come back to us; you are people who doubted the truth and victory, who broke down and were under the command of the non-believers. At the same time, if your hands are not stained with blood, we are prepared to find ways to spare your lives. And if you will help the mujahideen and the ordinary people in some way we shall not reject your good deeds and this will be to your advantage."
Finally, Sadulaev said that Ramzan Kadyrov's elevation to the post of puppet prime minister was the result of the "complete collapse" of Russian policy. The only thing Kadyrov can do "is torture prisoners and treat them brutally," Sadulaev said. "Putin likes that and it suits him. But that is all he can offer Kadyrov. This shows how weak the enemy is. After all, if the enemy were sharp, he would have found an intelligent and capable henchman who could talk to the people. This shows there is no future for the Kremlin's policy. And such a bankrupt Kremlin policy will speed up our victory in the Caucasus, although it will not be easy for those people who are being tormented."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/09/2006
05:56 ||
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Boy, Sadulayev spins faster than a neutron star! This guy is a fitting replacement for Baghdad Bob, and equally believable.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
04/09/2006 13:22
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Details contained in court documents about the four others charged along with Jose Padilla with being part of a North American terror support cell.
KIFAH WAEL JAYYOUSI: 44 years old. Naturalized U.S. citizen originally from Jordan. Doctorate degree in civil engineering and U.S. Navy veteran. Began publishing in 1994 the Islam Report that federal investigators say was used to raise money for Islamic extremists and report on Muslim radicals worldwide. Founded American Islamic Group, "the voice of the mujahideen." Has wife and five children living in Detroit. Arrested March 2005 after returning from Qatar.
ADHAM AMIN HASSOUN: 43 years old. Palestinian born in Lebanon who came to United States in 1989. Worked as computer programmer in Broward County but was allegedly the main East Coast representative of Jayyousi's AIG. Prosecutors say he helped distribute Islam Report in South Florida and provided extremist recruits. One of them was Jose Padilla, investigators say. Originally arrested in June 2002 on an immigration violation charge.
KASSEM DAHER: Lebanese national with Canadian residency status. Lived in Le Duc, Canada, and helped distribute the Islam Report. Was allegedly involved in planning to provide money and fighters for jihad in Bosnia, Chechnya and elsewhere. Was close associate of Mohamed Zaky, a former associate of Jayyousi who was killed in 1995 while fighting Russians in Chechnya.
MOHAMED HESHAM YOUSSEF: Another alleged recruit of Hassoun's for violent Islamic extremism. Investigators say Youssef, living in Egypt, frequently discussed with Hassoun the travel logistics of mujahideen fighters. Hassoun frequently wired money to Youssef for these "brothers," among them Jose Padilla. One FBI intercept has Youssef telling Hassoun that Padilla had "entered into the area of Usama" - a reference to al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/09/2006
05:55 ||
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KIFAH WAEL JAYYOUSI: 44 years old. Naturalized U.S. citizen originally from Jordan. Doctorate degree in civil engineering and U.S. Navy veteran.
#2
Not only not good, but extremely bad. Notice that these shitbags are from all over. Common trait is Muslim. Well educated..here no doubt. Well indoctrinated into American society. Lived here among us comfortably many years. Perfectly willing to betray us. We need to wake up to the Muslim death cult. All mosques should be shut down.These people are all betrayers of western beliefs and out to subvert us and our way of life. Let's start getting rid of them now. if they expect to live in the West, let them renounce any affiliation to Moonbatism. otherwise, move along...quickly.
The FBI investigation that yielded criminal charges against former "enemy combatant" Jose Padilla began more than a dozen years ago, after the arrest of a charismatic blind sheik in New York revealed the existence of a North American network supporting Islamic extremists worldwide.
Although Padilla is by far the most famous, his co-defendants in a trial set for Miami this fall were allegedly more active for a much longer period in recruiting would-be terrorists and advocating radical Muslim causes, according to court documents.
In fact, the original FBI terrorism probe began a few months after Padilla, a former Chicago gang member, was released from a Florida prison in 1992 after serving a year on a firearms violation. Over the next decade, the investigation would lead from New York to San Diego to Detroit to Sunrise, Fla., where Padilla's alleged terror recruiter was operating.
A potential obstacle to trial in the Miami case was removed Monday by the U.S. Supreme Court, which rejected an attempt by Padilla's lawyers to use his case to challenge President Bush's wartime powers to detain people indefinitely without charge.
After the al-Qaida terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the investigation would lead to terror support indictments against two alleged leaders of the network - Adham Amin Hassoun and Kifah Wael Jayyousi - and later against Padilla, who was held by the U.S. military without charge for 3 1/2 years as an "enemy combatant."
Padilla was arrested May 8, 2002 at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport and later accused of plotting to detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb" in a major U.S. city. The Miami indictment, however, does not mention that alleged plot.
The FBI probe began in 1993, the same year that al-Qaida first attempted to topple the World Trade Center towers with bombs in an underground garage. It was also the year radical Egyptian cleric Omar Abdel Rahman was arrested on charges of plotting to bomb New York landmarks and assassinate Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. He was later convicted.
Thousands of telephone calls between those charged in the Miami case were monitored by the FBI and other U.S. intelligence agencies over more than a decade, but no one was arrested in the case until June 2002 and no terror-related charges were brought until October 2004.
One reason for that was a legal "wall" that existed for years at the FBI to separate intelligence and criminal investigations. Passage of the Patriot Act by Congress a few weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks removed that wall, allowing criminal investigators access to a vast trove of intelligence intercepts, wiretaps and informants.
The early focus of the alleged terror support operatives charged in the Miami case were the violent Muslim movements in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya, Eritrea and Somalia.
Jayyousi, a Jordanian national and naturalized U.S. citizen, was a "supporter and follower" of Rahman, frequently talking with the jailed sheik by telephone in 1994 and 1995, according to the FBI. Shortly after Rahman's arrest, Jayyousi had founded the American Islamic Group, which published the Islam Report. This newsletter carried news about the sheik and details glorifying the exploits of jihadists around the world.
"Jayyousi would update the sheik with jihad news, many times reading accounts and statements issued directly by terrorist organizations" in Jordan and Egypt, FBI agent John T. Kavanaugh said in an affidavit.
Jayyousi, who lived in San Diego, Detroit, Baltimore and Egypt during the probe, also allegedly used the Islam Report to raise money for Muslim extremists through nonprofit organizations used as cover: Save Bosnia Now, later changed to American Worldwide Relief. This purported charity had offices around the world, including San Diego, Bosnia, Germany and Croatia.
According to his lawyer, Jayyousi was interviewed by FBI agents eight times between 1995 and 2003 about his activities but wasn't charged until April 2005. He has a wife and five children in Detroit and was recently released on bail - the only defendant in the Miami case to win pretrial release.
Jayyousi, who has a doctorate degree in civil engineering and served in the U.S. Navy, said in court papers that he never advocated terrorism and that his words in the Islam Report are protected by the Constitution's free speech guarantees.
"Dr. Jayyousi has not been accused of personally participating in any violent activity," said his lawyer, William Swor.
Hassoun, a Lebanese-born Palestinian, worked during much of the 1990s as a computer programmer in the Broward County suburb of Sunrise. He was also an associate of Jayyousi, helping distribute the Islam Report in South Florida and looking for young recruits willing to become mujahideen to fight overseas for extremist Muslim causes, according to the FBI.
Hassoun was originally arrested on an immigration violation in 2002 and later indicted in the terrorism case. But he had been under FBI investigation since a January 1993 telephone call between Hassoun and Rahman, the blind sheik, according to court papers.
One of his recruits allegedly was Padilla, otherwise known as "Ibrahim" and "Abu Abdullah the Puerto Rican," court documents say. Padilla had begun the conversion to Islam after his 1992 prison release.
Maulana Shafayat Mohamed, leader of the Dar Uloom Islamic Institute in Pembroke Pines, said in an interview that he taught Padilla both Arabic and the Koran. He said Hassoun in the late 1990s attempted to speak at his mosque - Hassoun was affiliated with a Sunrise mosque - but that he was refused permission, partly because Hassoun was known to harbor extremist views.
As for Padilla, Mohamed said he was "a quiet guy" who never demonstrated any radical tendencies.
"I never heard him say or do anything that would give me the slightest idea he would think like that," Mohamed said. "Somebody must have seen his good nature and brainwashed him and turned him into that."
After they hooked up, Hassoun in 1996 told Padilla to get ready to move to Egypt, which he finally did on Sept. 5, 1998, according to intercepted conversations. Padilla would eventually find his way to Afghanistan, where he allegedly attending an al-Qaida training camp and was eventually given the "dirty bomb" assignment by top al-Qaida leaders.
Hassoun has also denied being an advocate of terrorism or that he recruited jihad fighters.
A fellow Hassoun recruit named in the Padilla indictment is Mohamed Hesham Youssef, who had left the United States in 1996, the court documents say. Youssef, who is believed in custody n Egypt, provided assistance to Padilla in Egypt and frequently provided reports about their welfare to Hassoun, according to transcripts of intercepted conversations.
The final Padilla co-defendant is Kassem Daher, another follower of Sheik Rahman who lived in Le Duc, Canada, and helped distribute Jayyousi's Islam Report in Canada. Daher left Canada for Lebanon in May 1998 and is still there, according to the FBI.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/09/2006
05:54 ||
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Twenty years? Must have been some serious detecting going on!
Iran has been conducting a sort of grand military parade up and down the Gulf this week, displaying its defensive hardware, test-firing sophisticated-sounding new weapons systems, and proclaiming its readiness to repel all would-be aggressors. Revolutionary Guard General Yahya Rahim Safavi, commander of the Great Prophet exercises, declared that Iran was now able to confront any extra-regional invasion.
Neighbouring Sunni Arab states, locked in political and territorial disputes with Tehrans Shia leadership, may feel duly intimidated not that any of them were planning to attack. A new high-speed torpedo called Hoot (meaning whale), so-called flying boats and various radar-avoiding surface-to-sea missile launches may also have seriously frightened local marine wildlife.
But the United States, the principal intended audience of Irans martial ostentation, is unimpressed. We know the Iranians are always trying to improve their weapons systems, a Pentagon spokesperson said. The Iranians have also been known to boast and exaggerate their technical and tactical capabilities.
The US has repeatedly declined to rule out military action if coercive diplomacy fails to resolve the dispute over Irans nuclear activities. And if the issue at hand is relative US-Iranian military might, it is really no contest. Total US defence-related spending will rise this year to about $550-billion; Iran allocated $4,4-billion to defence in 2005. It cannot begin to match US weapons, technology and expertise.
Irans great strength is its manpower: an army numbering 350 000 soldiers, plus 125 000 Revolutionary Guards, says the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Yet such an imposing host will be of little use if any future attack on Irans suspect nuclear facilities is directed, as is thought likely, from the air.
Because of Western sanctions, ostracism and a lack of spare parts, Iran has few modern fighter aircraft, although Russia recently proposed a $1-billion sale of 29 Tor-M1 missile systems for anti-aircraft defence. The air force still relies in part on Iraqi MiGs flown to Iran for safety by Saddam Hussein at the start of the Gulf War in 1991 and never returned.
Michael Knights, writing in Janes Intelligence Review, said Iran was likely to try to repel any attack though a mobile defence of highly integrated local networks of interceptor aircraft and ground-based SAMs [surface-to-air missiles]. This would provide layered protection for strategic locations such as the Isfahan and Bushehr facilities and Bandar Abbas at the mouth of the Gulf.
While Great Prophet may have failed to predict Iranian military success, it has made a number of discomfiting points to the US and its allies. By focusing on the Strait of Hormuz, Iran reminded the West that up to one-third of the worlds exported oil supply must pass through a channel that US strategists call a global chokepoint. The exercises alone have driven up crude oil prices.
American planners, trying to anticipate Irans likely response to an attack, say it could block the strait using mines. Unnamed intelligence officials told The Washington Post this week that there was a growing consensus that, if attacked, Iran would also resort to terrorism against civilian targets in the US and Europe, and would use Hizbullah and Islamic Jihad to foment trouble in Israel-Palestine, Lebanon and Iraq. No evidence was cited for these claims.
By highlighting external threats, this weeks exercises have propaganda value for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejads government, anxious to shore up domestic support for its hard-line stance. Irans rejection of the United Nationss 30-day deadline for nuclear compliance was reaffirmed this week by the Foreign Minister, Manouchehr Mottaki.
Parading its own capabilities, the US has meanwhile made a point of publicising tests in Nevada of deep penetration bunker-buster bombs that could be used against underground nuclear facilities. And moving perilously close to enemy lines, it plans its own naval exercises in the Gulf next month. The codename? Arabian Gauntlet.
A militant attack in Chechnya, a Russian republic in the North Caucasus, killed one police officer and two civilians, the local interior ministry said Sunday.
According to the ministry, unidentified persons opened automatic fire at a car in the village of Sernovodsk in the Sunzha district of Chechnya, killing a police officer and his two relatives.
Measures have been launched to find the attackers.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/09/2006
05:50 ||
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An internal staff report by the United States Embassy and the military command in Baghdad provides a sobering province-by-province snapshot of Iraq's political, economic and security situation, rating the overall stability of 6 of the 18 provinces "serious" and one "critical." The report is a counterpoint to some recent upbeat public statements by top American politicians and military officials.
The report, 10 pages of briefing points titled "Provincial Stability Assessment," underscores the shift in the nature of the Iraq war three years after the toppling of Saddam Hussein. Warnings of sectarian and ethnic frictions are raised in many regions, even in those provinces generally described as nonviolent by American officials.
There are alerts about the growing power of Iranian-backed religious Shiite parties, several of which the United States helped put into power, and rival militias in the south. The authors also point to the Arab-Kurdish fault line in the north as a major concern, with the two ethnicities vying for power in Mosul, where violence is rampant, and Kirkuk, whose oil fields are critical for jump-starting economic growth in Iraq.
The patterns of discord mapped by the report confirm that ethnic and religious schisms have become entrenched across much of the country, even as monthly American fatalities have fallen. Those indications, taken with recent reports of mass migrations from mixed Sunni-Shiite areas, show that Iraq is undergoing a de facto partitioning along ethnic and sectarian lines, with clashes sometimes political, sometimes violent taking place in those mixed areas where different groups meet.
The report, the first of its kind, was written over a six-week period by a joint civilian and military group in Baghdad that wanted to provide a baseline assessment for conditions that new reconstruction teams would face as they were deployed to the provinces, said Daniel Speckhard, an American ambassador in Baghdad who oversees reconstruction efforts.
The writers included officials from the American Embassy's political branch, reconstruction agencies and the American military command in Baghdad, Mr. Speckhard said. The authors also received information from State Department officers in the provinces, he said.
The report was part of a periodic briefing on Iraq that the State Department provides to Congress, and has been shown to officials on Capitol Hill, including those involved in budgeting for the reconstruction teams. It is not clear how many top American officials have seen it; the report has not circulated widely at the Defense Department or the National Security Council, spokesmen there said.
A copy of the report, which is not classified, was provided to The New York Times by a government official in Washington who opposes the way the war is being conducted and said the confidential assessment provided a more realistic gauge of stability in Iraq than the recent portrayals by senior military officers. It is dated Jan. 31, 2006, three weeks before the bombing of a revered Shiite shrine in Samarra, which set off reprisals that killed hundreds of Iraqis. Recent updates to the report are minor and leave its conclusions virtually unchanged, Mr. Speckhard said.
The general tenor of the Bush administration's comments on Iraq has been optimistic. On Thursday, President Bush argued in a speech that his strategy was working despite rising violence in Iraq.
Vice President Dick Cheney, on the CBS News program "Face the Nation," suggested last month that the administration's positive views were a better reflection of the conditions in Iraq than news media reports.
"I think it has less to do with the statements we've made, which I think were basically accurate and reflect reality," Mr. Cheney said, "than it does with the fact that there's a constant sort of perception, if you will, that's created because what's newsworthy is the car bomb in Baghdad."
In their public comments, the White House and the Pentagon have used daily attack statistics as a measure of stability in the provinces. Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, a senior military spokesman in Baghdad, told reporters recently that 12 of 18 provinces experienced "less than two attacks a day."
Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on the NBC News program "Meet the Press" on March 5 that the war in Iraq was "going very, very well," although a few days later, he acknowledged serious difficulties.
In recent interviews and speeches, some administration officials have begun to lay out the deep-rooted problems plaguing the American enterprise here. At the forefront has been Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador, who has said the invasion opened a "Pandora's box" and, on Friday, warned that a civil war here could engulf the entire Middle East.
On Saturday, Mr. Khalilzad and Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the senior military commander in Iraq, issued a statement praising some of the political and security goals achieved in the last three years, but also cautioning that "despite much progress, much work remains."
Mr. Speckhard, the ambassador overseeing reconstruction, said the report was not as dire as its assessments might suggest. "Really, this shows there's one province that continues to be a major challenge," he said. "There are a number of others that have significant work to do in them. And there are other parts of the country that are doing much better."
But the report's capsule summaries of each province offer some surprisingly gloomy news. The report's formula for rating stability takes into account governing, security and economic issues. The oil-rich Basra Province, where British troops have patrolled in relative calm for most of the last three years, is now rated as "serious."
The report defines "serious" as having "a government that is not fully formed or cannot serve the needs of its residents; economic development that is stagnant with high unemployment, and a security situation marked by routine violence, assassinations and extremism."
British fatalities have been on the rise in Basra in recent months, with attacks attributed to Shiite insurgents. There is a "high level of militia activity including infiltration of local security forces," the report says. "Smuggling and criminal activity continues unabated. Intimidation attacks and assassination are common."
The report states that economic development in the region, long one of the poorest in Iraq, is "hindered by weak government."
The city of Basra has widely been reported as devolving into a mini-theocracy, with government and security officials beholden to Shiite religious leaders, enforcing bans on alcohol and mandating head scarves for women. Police cars and checkpoints are often decorated with posters or stickers of Moktada al-Sadr, the rebellious cleric, or Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, a cleric whose party is very close to Iran. Both men have formidable militias.
Mr. Hakim's party controls the provincial councils of eight of the nine southern provinces, as well as the council in Baghdad.
In a color-coded map included in the report, the province of Anbar, the wide swath of western desert that is the heart of the Sunni Arab insurgency, is depicted in red, for "critical." The six provinces categorized as "serious" Basra, Baghdad, Diyala and three others to the north are orange. Eight provinces deemed "moderate" are in yellow, and the three Kurdish provinces are depicted in green, for "stable."
The "critical" security designation, the report says, means a province has "a government that is not functioning" or that is only "represented by a single strong leader"; "an economy that does have the infrastructure or government leadership to develop and is a significant contributor to instability"; and "a security situation marked by high levels of AIF [anti-Iraq forces] activity, assassinations and extremism."
The most surprising assessments are perhaps those of the nine southern provinces, none of which are rated "stable." The Bush administration often highlights the relative lack of violence in those regions.
For example, the report rates as "moderate" the two provinces at the heart of Shiite religious power, Najaf and Karbala, and points to the growing Iranian political presence there. In Najaf, "Iranian influence on provincial government of concern," the report says. Both the governor and former governor of Najaf are officials in Mr. Hakim's religious party, founded in Iran in the early 1980's. The report also notes that "there is growing tension between Mahdi Militia and Badr Corps that could escalate" referring to the private armies of Mr. Sadr and Mr. Hakim, which have clashed before.
The report does highlight two bright spots for Najaf. The provincial government is able to maintain stability for the province and provide for the people's needs, it says, and religious tourism offers potential for economic growth.
But insurgents still manage to occasionally penetrate the tight ring of security. A car bomb exploded Thursday near the golden-domed Imam Ali Shrine, killing at least 10 people and wounding dozens.
Immediately to the north, Babil Province, an important strategic area abutting Baghdad, also has "strong Iranian influence apparent within council," the report says. There is "ethnic conflict in north Babil," and "crime is a major factor within the province." In addition, "unemployment remains high."
Throughout the war, American commanders have repeatedly tried to pacify northern Babil, a farming area with a virulent Sunni Arab insurgency, but they have had little success. In southern Babil, the new threat is Shiite militiamen who are pushing up from Shiite strongholds like Najaf and Karbala and beginning to develop rivalries among themselves.
Gen. Qais Hamza al-Maamony, the commander of Babil's 8,000-member police force, said his officers were not ready yet to intervene between warring militias, should it come to that, as many fear. "They would be too frightened to get into the middle," he said in an interview.
If the American troops left Babil, he said, "the next day would be civil war."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/09/2006
05:48 ||
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#1
No real surprises here for readers of the Burg. Although, I haven't seen reports before that the Kurds are taking control of Mosul. However, It's an obvious development as anyone who looks at a map could foresee.
Basically the Sunnis are screwed and it will be a nice object lesson for future oppressors in a multi-ethnic/religous state.
#2
I take anything the NY Slimes says witha very large grain of salt. Some of these assessments are written with the primary purpose of being leaked to the press and causing the administration embarassment. They are never intended to reach their "official" audience.
Al
Posted by: Frozen Al ||
04/09/2006 14:00
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#3
rating the overall stability of 6 of the 18 provinces "serious" and one "critical."
And from there, goes on to describe the 6 provinces (less than half, alto that is never mentioned), thus providing a "slanted" reading of the report.
I would like to know of the other 12 provinces, but the NYT thinks I don't need to know about what is happening in them.
Spains Supreme Court on Friday threw out the convictions of three men found guilty last year of being part of an al-Qaida-linked group after prosecutors agreed there was not sufficient evidence to jail them, a court official said.
The men Driss Chebli, Sadik Merizak and Abdelaziz Benyaich had received sentences of between six and eight years Chebli for collaboration with an al-Qaida-linked terror group, and the others for belonging to a terror organization. They were among 18 people convicted in a high-profile trial last year linked to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Prosecutors this week acknowledged there was not sufficient evidence to jail the three and the Supreme Court agreed, said the court official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because his offices ground rules prohibit him from being identified. The court was hearing appeals by all 18.
On Thursday, prosecutors also urged the court to throw out a conviction for murder conspiracy against the leading suspect in the case, Syrian-born Spaniard Imad Yarkas, 46. Yarkas is alleged to have founded and led an al-Qaida cell in Spain, which investigators say was a staging ground for the Sept. 11 attacks, along with Germany.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/09/2006
05:44 ||
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Some worry new drive for rights will result in an ethnic civil war
DIYARBAKIR, TURKEY - For Ramazan, an elderly Kurdish businessman, the recent battles between masked Kurdish youths and Turkish police have rekindled a dream the creation of an autonomous zone for his people in Turkey, much like the one carved out of Iraq. But that dream is Turkey's worst nightmare.
While Kurds look to northern Iraq for inspiration, Turks see it as an example of what the future could bring: a collapsed central state and a brewing ethnic civil war.
Iran and Syria also are concerned that Kurds in Iraq's oil-rich north could set up an independent state if the Iraqi central government collapses serving as a rallying call for their own restless Kurdish minorities and destabilizing the entire region.
Iran's ambassador to Turkey, Firouz Dowlatabadi, warned in an interview published last week that Turkey, Iran and Syria need a joint policy on the Kurdish issue or "the U.S. will carve pieces from us for a Kurdish state."
International politics was of little concern to Ramazan as he headed into the streets upon hearing Kurdish protesters were confronting Turkish police.
The protests started late last month in Diyarbakir, the largest city in southeastern Turkey, the predominantly Kurdish region devastated by more than a decade of warfare between autonomy-seeking Kurdish guerrillas and the army.
At least 15 people were killed, and hundreds were injured and detained as the rioting spread, with mass demonstrations throughout the southeast and smaller protests in Istanbul.
"I did not throw any stone. I did not enter the clashes. I am old, you know," said Ramazan, who refused to give details about his life for fear the police could track him down. "But I went out to support the Kurdish revolution. I had to be there since I am a Kurd."
Turkey refuses to recognize Kurds as a minority, and speaking Kurdish was illegal until 1991. At the prodding of the European Union, Turkey recently has granted some cultural rights to Kurds such as limited broadcasts on television, but many say it is too little, too late.
Turks fear that increasing cultural rights could cause the country to break along ethnic lines.
Stoking that fear is the U.S.-supported Kurdish region in northern Iraq, complete with its own government and militia.
Kurds have played a key role in the new Iraqi government and are prepared to stay in a federal Iraq. But many say their real aspiration is independence.
Turkish businessmen are flocking to the area as the Kurdish economy in northern Iraq grows. Some Turkish Kurds living on the border regions are sending their children to universities in the area.
Fighting between government and rebel forces which has left 37,000 dead since 1984 largely ended after the 1999 capture of guerrilla leader Abdullah Ocalan but began to flare up again in 2004.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan pledged not to give in to the rioters.
"No one should dare to test the power of the state or the nation," Erdogan said last week in an address to his party.
Many Kurds have pinned their hopes on Turkey's push to join the EU, which repeatedly has said Ankara's treatment of the Kurds will be a key determining factor in its decision on whether to accept the country. But that process could take at least a decade.
#1
*snicker* Erdogan thought he was so big and clever when he attempted to sabatoge our efforts in the war. Feeling pretty good about that now, are you, Yappy?
Now he again tries to make himself the big man by joining with two countries that are weak, despotic, ripe for civil war and on a steep downhill slide. Good thinking. Erdogan's a terrible leader and a loser. Turkey has done nothing but slide backwards from the modern world since he was elected. I predict it won't be long before the Turks tire of him and realize he is the source of all of their problems. Good riddance.
Hamas is to abandon its use of suicide bombers, who have killed almost 300 Israelis, in any future confrontations with Israel, its activists have told The Observer.
The Islamic group, which leads the Palestinian Authority, says, however, that it may resort to other forms of violence if there is no progress towards Palestinian statehood.
Yihiyeh Musa, a Hamas member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, said Hamas had moved into a 'new era' which did not require suicide attacks.
'The suicide bombings happened in an exceptional period and they have now stopped,' he said. 'They came to an end as a change of belief.'
As Hamas toned down its rhetoric, Israel increased pressure on the Palestinians, particularly in Gaza. Two militants were killed in an airstrike near Gaza City yesterday and five men and a five-year-old boy were killed on Friday night.
Each day hundreds of artillery shells are fired by Israel at northern Gaza. Palestinian factional tension is also high and the price of commodities such as flour and sugar has more than doubled as a result of Israel closing border crossings.
Hamas is keen to gain acceptance from the international community. On Friday the European Union announced it was stopping direct funding of the PA, while the United States has halted aid projects. Hamas needs outside funding of $150m each month to pay PA wages or else the Palestinian economy will collapse.
Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, warned in an interview published yesterday that any attempt by Israel unilaterally to impose unjust borders on the Palestinians would lead to another war within 10 years.
Hamas was the first Palestinian group to use suicide bombers and its tactics provided inspiration for Islamic insurgents and terrorists in Iraq, Afghanistan, the US and Europe. Hamas declared a ceasefire last year and in January was elected to lead the Palestinian Authority. However, despite the ceasefire, Hamas still carries the legacy of its suicide attacks on Israeli civilians.
Musa said Hamas only embarked on suicide bombing campaigns as a response to extreme provocations by Israel, such as the killing of 29 Palestinians in Hebron in 1993. It had been a policy of desperation.
According to the Israeli army, since October 2000, Hamas carried out 51 suicide attacks, killing 272 Israelis. Islamic Jihad and the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade carried out 34 each, killing 98 and 80 Israelis respectively. Almost 5,000 people, mostly Palestinians, have been killed over that period.
Many Palestinians believe that suicide bombing damaged their cause, portraying them, not Israel, as the aggressors.
'The occupation government with its outside allies succeeded in labelling all Palestinians as terrorists as a result of the suicide bombings,' said Musa.
Ghazi Hamed, the spokesman for the government, said in future any military action would be restricted to the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel.
Israel and the international community have demanded that Hamas recognise Israel and renounce violence as a precondition to normalising relations but it has so far refused.
The ascent of Hamas to political power has led its leaders to modify its positions but opinion is divided as to whether this is a fundamental change or a tactical expedient. Israel says Hamas remains true to its original aims, as stated in its charter, of destroying the state of Israel.
Mordechai Kedar, a political scientist at Bar-Ilan University, near Tel Aviv, said Hamas's rejection of violence was tactical. 'If they succeed in stabilising their state then they will take out their different agenda and start where they left off. For months they have been smuggling long-range missiles. They are preparing for the next phase but for the time being they have more urgent problems,' he said.
Other commentators say Hamas has always had a moderate wing. Khaled Hroub, director of the Cambridge Arab Media Project and the author of Hamas: Political Thought and Practice, said that even among members of Hamas, suicide bombing was controversial.
'If one looks at the conduct of Hamas in 1996 there was huge controversy even in the ranks of Hamas over its bombing campaign. Hroub says Hamas has the potential to make the transition to a purely political organisation. 'The concept of the two-state solution is now the cornerstone of their thinking. I doubt we will see the old Hamas again,' he said.
Hamas now finds itself turning from poacher to gamekeeper. Islamic Jihad and the Fatah-linked Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade have said they will continue to attack Israel. But Hamas fears that if armed groups are carrying out attacks and firing missiles, it will make its government look weak. Hamas hopes to persuade other groups to stop their attacks but insists it will be be prepared to use force.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/09/2006
05:40 ||
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#3
Thats ok. They will just 'splinter' into a new group which will continue the fight while 'hamas' collects the funds Jizziya tax from the infidels and pay 'salaries' to the security forces terrorist thus freeing up Saudi funding for ammo, guns, and bomber-belts to kill jooos.
#6
Wall climbing with all those explosives, wires, fuzes, clackers..... sounds too much like work, and we all know what Paleos thing about work. Keep the 120mm's coming, the counter-battery fire is thrilling.
In the middle of methodically recalling the day his brother's family was killed, Yaseen's monotone voice and stream of tears suddenly stopped. He looked up, paused and pleaded: "Please don't let me say anything that will get me killed by the Americans. My family can't handle any more."
The story of what happened to Yaseen and his brother Younes' family has redefined Haditha's relationship with the Marines who patrol it. On Nov. 19, a roadside bomb struck a Humvee on Haditha's main road, killing one Marine and injuring two others.
The Marines say they took heavy gunfire afterwards and thought it was coming from the area around Younes' house. They went to investigate, and 23 people were killed.
Eight were from Younes' family. The only survivor, Younes' 13-year-old daughter, said her family wasn't shooting at Marines or harboring extremists that morning. They were sleeping when the bomb exploded. And when the Marines entered their house, she said, they shot at everyone inside.
The Navy Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) began an investigation in February after a Time Magazine reporter passed on accounts he had received about the incident. A second investigation was opened into how the Marines initially reported the killings - the Marines said that 15 people were killed by the roadside explosion and that eight insurgents were killed in subsequent combat.
On Friday, the Marines relieved of duty three leaders of the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, which had responsibility for Haditha when the shooting occurred. They are Lt. Col. Jeffrey R. Chessani, commander of the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, and two of his company commanders, Capt. James S. Kimber and Capt. Lucas M. McConnell. McConnell was commanding Kilo Company of the 3rd Battalion, the unit that struck the roadside bomb on Nov. 19 and led the subsequent search of the area.
The Marines' announcement didn't tie the disciplinary actions directly to Haditha, saying only that Maj. Gen. Richard Natonski, commanding general of the 1st Marine Division, had lost confidence in the officers' ability to command.
They were relieved because of "multiple incidents that occurred throughout their deployment," said Lt. Lawton King, a spokesman at the Marines' home base at Camp Pendleton, Calif., to which they recently returned. "This decision was made independent of the NCIS investigation."
The events of last November have clearly taken their toll on Yaseen and his niece, Safa, who trembles visibly as she listens to Yaseen recount what she told him of the attack. She cannot bring herself to tell the tale herself.
She fainted after the Marines burst through the door and began firing. When she regained consciousness, only her 3-year-old brother was still alive, but bleeding heavily. She comforted him in a room filled with dead family members until he died, too. And then she went to her Uncle Yaseen's house next door.
Neither Yaseen nor Safa have returned home since.
Indeed, many in this town, whose residents are stuck in the battle between extremists and the Americans, said now it is the U.S. military they fear most.
"The mujahadeen (holy warriors) will kill you if you stand against them or say anything against them. And the Americans will kill you if the mujahadeen attack them several kilometers away," said Mohammed al-Hadithi, 32, a barber who lives in neighboring Haqlania. With a cigarette between his fingers, he pointed at a Marine patrol as it passed in front of his shop. "I look at each of them, and I see killers."
Haditha, a town of about 100,000 people in Anbar province, undeniably is an insurgent bastion. Around the time of the attack, several storefronts were lined with posters and pictures supporting al-Qaida, although residents said they posted them to appease extremists.
Insurgents blend in with the residents, setting up their cells in homes next to those belonging to everyday citizens, some of them supportive.
There is no functioning police station and the government offices are largely vacant. The last man to call himself mayor relinquished the title earlier this year after scores of death threats from insurgents.
The military wouldn't release statistics, but attacks on U.S. troops are frequent.
Indeed, Haditha has been the site of some of the deadliest attacks against U.S. forces. On Aug. 1, six Marine reservists were killed in an ambush; two days later, a roadside bomb killed 14 Marines traveling in an amphibious assault vehicle just outside the town, the deadliest single attack ever on U.S. forces.
On Nov. 19, according to military spokeswoman Lt. Col. Michelle Martin-Hing, the Marines were hit four separate times by roadside bombs and were fired on multiple times by gunmen they couldn't see.
Three years after the war began, the U.S. military concedes it hasn't figured out how to tell a terrorist from an ordinary citizen in places like Haditha.
A newly poured spot of asphalt now marks the spot where the IED, or improvised explosive device, exploded. It was 7:15 a.m. and the blast was the first IED of the day. Lance Cpl. Miguel Terrazas, 20, of El Paso, Texas, died instantly. The armed fire attack started immediately, according to the Marines.
There is as yet no official public version of what took place next and U.S. officials familiar with the investigation would discuss the incident only if their names were not used.
According to these officials, a car approached the convoy at about the same time the shooting began. The Marines signaled it to stop and it did. But it was too close to the convoy and when four men jumped out of it, the Marines, suspecting the men had been involved in the IED attack, shot them dead.
Yaseen said he and his brother's family were asleep in their houses about 100 yards away when the explosion woke them. Minutes later, they heard the Marines blocking off the road.
Yaseen, citing Safa's account, said Younes started to prepare the family for the search they knew was coming, separating the men from the women and the children, as is custom during searches.
Younes moved his five children and sister-in-law into the bedroom, Yaseen said Safa told him. There, his wife was lying in bed, recovering from an appendectomy. They waited.
The Marines moved into another house first, according to U.S. officials. In that house, the Marines saw a line of closed doors and thought an ambush was coming. They shot, and seven people inside were killed, including one child. Two other children who stayed in the house survived. A woman who ran out with her baby also survived, military officials said.
Yaseen said Safa told him that her father heard something so he went to the front of the house. Seconds later, Safa said she heard several gunshots. She didn't know it at the time, but her father was dying. Four Marines then moved into the bedroom, where some of her sisters were standing at their mother's bedside, hugging her.
Yassen said Safa told him that one Marine started yelling at them in English, but that they didn't understand what he was saying. The women and children started screaming in fear, which Yaseen could hear from next door. This went on for several minutes, he said.
He said he never heard gunshots, only a long sudden silence.
Desperate, he tried to get next door and find out what happened, but Marines wouldn't let him pass.
"The waiting was killing me," Yaseen said. "We didn't know what happened."
Three hours later, someone knocked at Yaseen's door. He could hear a young voice wheezing and sobbing on the other side. It was Safa, covered in blood and dirt. Yaseen said he couldn't remember what she was wearing; he only saw the blood.
The family was dead, Safa told Yaseen.
Yaseen's wife cleaned Safa up while Yaseen prepared a white flag. Marines were still blocking the area. Carrying the flag, Yaseen, his wife, and Safa ran 200 yards to another relative's house where they have stayed since.
Safa trembled as Yaseen told the story to a visitor. She tried to tell it herself, but she couldn't. "My father told us to gather in one room, so the Americans could search," she said. And then she started to cry.
Yaseen said that Safa told him that four soldiers came into the bedroom, but only one did the yelling. Her mother, who had heard the shooting asked: "What did you do to my husband?" Her sisters, mother and aunt were crying. And then the one soldier who had been yelling started shooting.
Frightened, Safa fainted. She thought she had died. When she awoke, she remembered seeing her mother still lying in bed. Her head was blown open. She looked around and heard her 3-year-old brother, Mohammed, moan in pain. The blood was pouring out of his right arm.
"Come on, Mohammed. Get up so we can go to uncle's house," she told her brother. But he couldn't.
In the same room where her mother, aunt and sisters lay dead, Safa grabbed the toddler, sat down and leaned his head against her shoulder. She put his arm against her chest and held it to try to stop the bleeding. She kept holding and talking to him until, like everyone else in the room, he too was silent. And then she ran next door.
Yaseen didn't see the rest of his brother's family until he went to Haditha Hospital the next day to pick up the bodies. Dr. Waleed Abdul Khaliq al-Obeidi, the director of Haditha Hospital, said they arrived around midnight, about 12 hours after Safa left her house.
According to the death certificates, Younes died of multiple gunshot wounds to the chest. His wife, who was lying in bed, died of multiple gunshot wounds to the head. The daughters were all shot in the chest. Mohammed bled to death.
Younes didn't have a weapon, military officials confirmed.
According to the U.S. military officials, the Marines entered five houses that day. In the third house, they found a group of women and children and asked where the men were. The women pointed out the house and the Marines left, without firing a round. At that house, they found four men, some of them armed, and shot them dead.
Another group of Marines entered a fifth house, which appeared to be a terrorist cell. It had sleeping bags, weapons and a pile of Jordanian passports, military officials said. The men there were detained without incident.
Late last month, an IED exploded near the same spot where Terrazas was killed. Nearby shops started closing in the middle of the day, telling customers they feared being detained. Drivers suddenly stopped and pointed to the rising plume of smoke.
"That might have targeted the Americans," one driver said to another stopped and fearful about what to do next. "The Americans are coming."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/09/2006
05:39 ||
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#1
"fair and balanced" NANCY A. YOUSSEF
Knight Ridder Newspapers
#2
Why does this read like typical leftist propaganda? Because it is. It's not just the "facts" It's the facts carefully crafted to undermine the Marine Corps and individual Marines.
We don't need "journalists" like this. In fact I don't think we need most of them at all.
Posted by: SPoD ||
04/09/2006 13:27
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This may or may not have happened. It may have happened this way or another way. Point is, in guerrila confrontations, where these yellow cowards hide among the populace these incidents occur. No way to prevent them. We never learn these lessons. We went through this exact scenario 40 years ago. We can't participate in this. We have to have an American public mandate to go to these countries, if necessary, and eliminate as many as possible. Then, we need to leave. We can't deal with populations who are culturally against us. We either isolate them and leave them to their devices, or decide as a nation to eliminate as many as necessary to stop a threat. Anything else is waste.
A local edition of Playboy went on sale for the first time yesterday in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, pitting its tolerant mainstream against Islamic radicals.
The magazine, which is devoid of nudity but carries an interview with the Indonesian author Pramoedya Ananta Toer and an article on the former Indonesian province of East Timor, sold briskly.
As office workers in Jakarta passed it from desk to desk, one lamented: "It is too soft, no good at all. I thought it was going to be like the magazines in Europe and America."
But while its content differed little from other publications already available in the country - which has an active sex trade - militant groups threatened to take action against it. "The magazine has no goodwill and is threatening the very life of our nation," said Usman Alwi, from the Islamic Defenders Front. "If it does not shut within one week, we are prepared to launch a physical war against it."
Islam in Indonesia is proudly moderate. The vast majority of women go unveiled, even in the devout province of Aceh, often dubbed the "verandah of Mecca". The bombers of Jemaah Islamiyah, perpetrators of the Bali atrocities and attacks in the capital, are extremists with virtually no support among the population.
No Islamic radicals stood at the last presidential election, in 2004. But some politicians are keen to burnish their Islamic credentials, typified by an anti-pornography law currently before parliament.
In its draft form, among other measures, it would outlaw public kissing and the display of undefined "sensual body parts". It is intended to check moral decline. But the text has been condemned by women's groups and led to fears that sunbathers on Bali and elsewhere - which is majority Hindu - could face prison, putting Indonesia's tourist industry under threat.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak told Al-Arabiya satellite channel that most Shiites across the Arab world are loyal to Iran first rather than the countries where they live, AFP reported.
"There are Shiites in all these countries (of the region), significant percentages, and Shiites are mostly always loyal to Iran and not the countries where they live."
He singled out Iraq for special attention. "Naturally Iran has an influence over Shiites who make up 65 %of Iraq's population," Mubarak said when asked about Iran's role in neighbouring Iraq.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/09/2006
05:33 ||
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The Bush administration is studying options for military strikes against Iran as part of a broader strategy of coercive diplomacy to pressure Tehran to abandon its alleged nuclear development program, according to U.S. officials and independent analysts.
No attack appears likely in the short term, and many specialists inside and outside the U.S. government harbor serious doubts about whether an armed response would be effective. But administration officials are preparing for it as a possible option and using the threat "to convince them this is more and more serious," as a senior official put it.
According to current and former officials, Pentagon and CIA planners have been exploring possible targets, such as the uranium enrichment plant at Natanz and the uranium conversion facility at Isfahan. Although a land invasion is not contemplated, military officers are weighing alternatives ranging from a limited airstrike aimed at key nuclear sites, to a more extensive bombing campaign designed to destroy an array of military and political targets.
Preparations for confrontation with Iran underscore how the issue has vaulted to the front of President Bush's agenda even as he struggles with a relentless war in next-door Iraq. Bush views Tehran as a serious menace that must be dealt with before his presidency ends, aides said, and the White House, in its new National Security Strategy, last month labeled Iran the most serious challenge to the United States posed by any country.
Many military officers and specialists, however, view the saber rattling with alarm. A strike at Iran, they warn, would at best just delay its nuclear program by a few years but could inflame international opinion against the United States, particularly in the Muslim world and especially within Iran, while making U.S. troops in Iraq targets for retaliation.
"My sense is that any talk of a strike is the diplomatic gambit to keep pressure on others that if they don't help solve the problem, we will have to," said Kori Schake, who worked on Bush's National Security Council staff and teaches at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y.
Others believe it is more than bluster. "The Bush team is looking at the viability of airstrikes simply because many think airstrikes are the only real option ahead," said Kurt Campbell, a former Pentagon policy official.
The intensified discussion of military scenarios comes as the United States is working with European allies on a diplomatic solution. After tough negotiations, the U.N. Security Council issued a statement last month urging Iran to re-suspend its uranium enrichment program. But Russia and China, both veto-wielding council members, forced out any mention of consequences and are strongly resisting any sanctions.
U.S. officials continue to pursue the diplomatic course but privately seem increasingly skeptical that it will succeed. The administration is also coming under pressure from Israel, which has warned the Bush team that Iran is closer to developing a nuclear bomb than Washington thinks and that a moment of decision is fast approaching.
Bush and his team have calibrated their rhetoric to give the impression that the United States may yet resort to force. In January, the president termed a nuclear-armed Iran "a grave threat to the security of the world," words that echoed language he used before the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Vice President Cheney vowed "meaningful consequences" if Iran does not give up any nuclear aspirations, and U.N. Ambassador John R. Bolton refined the formula to "tangible and painful consequences."
Although Bush insists he is focused on diplomacy for now, he volunteered at a public forum in Cleveland last month his readiness to use force if Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad tries to follow through on his statement that Israel should be "wiped off the map."
"The threat from Iran is, of course, their stated objective to destroy our strong ally, Israel," Bush said. "That's a threat, a serious threat. . . . I'll make it clear again that we will use military might to protect our ally Israel."
Bush has also been privately consulting with key senators about options on Iran as part of a broader goal of regime change, according to an account by Seymour M. Hersh in the New Yorker magazine.
The U.S. government has taken some preliminary steps that go beyond planning. The Washington Post has reported that the military has been secretly flying surveillance drones over Iran since 2004 using radar, video, still photography and air filters to detect traces of nuclear activity not accessible to satellites. Hersh reported that U.S. combat troops have been ordered to enter Iran covertly to collect targeting data, but sources have not confirmed that to The Post.
The British government has launched its own planning for a potential U.S. strike, studying security arrangements for its embassy and consular offices, for British citizens and corporate interests in Iran and for ships in the region and British troops in Iraq. British officials indicate their government is unlikely to participate directly in any attacks.
Israel is preparing, as well. The government recently leaked a contingency plan for attacking on its own if the United States does not, a plan involving airstrikes, commando teams, possibly missiles and even explosives-carrying dogs. Israel, which bombed Iraq's Osirak nuclear plant in 1981 to prevent it from being used to develop weapons, has built a replica of Natanz, according to Israeli media, but U.S. strategists do not believe Israel has the capacity to accomplish the mission without nuclear weapons.
Iran appears to be taking the threat seriously. The government, which maintains its nuclear activity is only for peaceful, civilian uses, has launched a program to reinforce key sites, such as Natanz and Isfahan, by building concrete ceilings, tunneling into mountains and camouflaging facilities. Iran lately has tested several missiles in a show of strength.
Israel points to those missiles to press their case in Washington. Israeli officials traveled here recently to convey more urgency about Iran. Although U.S. intelligence agencies estimate Iran is about a decade away from having a nuclear bomb, Israelis believe a critical breakthrough could occur within months. They told U.S. officials that Iran is beginning to test a more elaborate cascade of centrifuges, indicating that it is further along than previously believed.
"What the Israelis are saying is this year -- unless they are pressured into abandoning the program -- would be the year they will master the engineering problem," a U.S. official said. "That would be a turning point, but it wouldn't mean they would have a bomb."
But various specialists and some military officials are resisting strikes.
"The Pentagon is arguing forcefully against it because it is so constrained" in Iraq and Afghanistan, said Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former CIA Middle East specialist. A former defense official who stays in touch with colleagues added, "I don't think anybody's prepared to use the military option at this point."
As the administration weighs these issues, two main options are under consideration, according to one person with contacts among Air Force planners. The first would be a quick and limited strike against nuclear-related facilities accompanied by a threat to resume bombing if Iran responds with terrorist attacks in Iraq or elsewhere. The second calls for a more ambitious campaign of bombing and cruise missiles leveling targets well beyond nuclear facilities, such as Iranian intelligence headquarters, the Revolutionary Guard and some in the government.
Any extended attack would require U.S. forces to cripple Iran's air defense system and air force, prepare defenses for U.S. ground forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and move Navy ships to the Persian Gulf to protect shipping. U.S. forces could launch warplanes from aircraft carriers, from the Diego Garcia island base in the Indian Ocean and, in the case of stealth bombers, from the United States. But if generals want land-based aircraft in the region, they face the uphill task of trying to persuade Turkey to allow use of the U.S. air base at Incirlik.
Planners also are debating whether launching attacks from Iraq or using Iraqi airspace would exacerbate the political cost in the Muslim world, which would see it as proof that the United States invaded Iraq to make it a base for military conquest of the region.
Unlike the Israeli air attack on Osirak, a strike on Iran would prove more complex because Iran has spread its facilities across the country, guarded some of them with sophisticated antiaircraft batteries and shielded them underground.
Pentagon planners are studying how to penetrate eight-foot-deep targets and are contemplating tactical nuclear devices. The Natanz facility consists of more than two dozen buildings, including two huge underground halls built with six-foot walls and supposedly protected by two concrete roofs with sand and rocks in between, according to Edward N. Luttwak, a specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
"The targeteers honestly keep coming back and saying it will require nuclear penetrator munitions to take out those tunnels," said Kenneth M. Pollack, a former CIA analyst. "Could we do it with conventional munitions? Possibly. But it's going to be very difficult to do."
Retired Air Force Col. Sam Gardiner, an expert in targeting and war games who teaches at the National Defense University, recently gamed an Iran attack and identified 24 potential nuclear-related facilities, some below 50 feet of reinforced concrete and soil.
At a conference in Berlin, Gardiner outlined a five-day operation that would require 400 "aim points," or targets for individual weapons, at nuclear facilities, at least 75 of which would require penetrating weapons. He also presumed the Pentagon would hit two chemical production plants, medium-range ballistic missile launchers and 14 airfields with sheltered aircraft. Special Operations forces would be required, he said.
Gardiner concluded that a military attack would not work, but said he believes the United States seems to be moving inexorably toward it. "The Bush administration is very close to being left with only the military option," he said.
Others forecast a more surgical strike aimed at knocking out a single "choke point" that would disrupt the Iranian nuclear program. "The process can be broken at any point," a senior administration official said. "But part of the risk is: We don't know if Natanz is the only enrichment facility. We could bomb it, take the political cost and still not set them back."
Joseph Cirincione of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace said a more likely target might be Isfahan, which he visited last year and which appeared lightly defended and above-ground. But he argued that any attack would only firm up Iranian resolve to develop weapons. "Whatever you do," he said, "is almost certain to accelerate a nuclear bomb program rather than destroy it."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/09/2006
05:33 ||
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#1
Ya think? Lol. A sewing circle of wannabees and has-beens fluffing away for WaPo. Hope they got lunch out of it.
#3
Joseph Cirincione of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace said [...] "Whatever you do is almost certain to accelerate a nuclear bomb program rather than destroy it."
And there you have it, the liberal, defeatist mantra for the entire war: whatever America does, it's wrong.
These assholes are going to get us all killed.
Posted by: Dave D. ||
04/09/2006 9:20
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I really think that Iran could acquire nuclear weapons with little difficulty if it simply got its hands off of Iraq, stopped its blustering, and relaxed its domestic clampdowns. What is it that they see that I don't?
#10
Well, the first thing that you do is to take out domestic gasoline refining capability and storage facilities (tank farms). That will get the yellowjackets all agitated, and go from there.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
04/09/2006 14:24
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#11
get em agitated and clip their wings....then the bombers sprayer moves in?
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/09/2006 14:34
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The recent disclosures that the six militants arrested by Uttar Pradesh Police in connection with the terrorist attack in Sankat Mochan Temple and railway station in the holy city of Varanasi on March 7, belonged to Bangladesh based outfit Harqat-ul-Jehad al-Islami (HUJI), have highlighted the dangers that a talibanised Bangladesh poses to its neighbours. The serial blasts had killed 21 people and injured 62 in a city which is considered the holiest by Hindus. The blasts were clearly intended to provoke retaliation with the aim of raising communal tensions in the most populous state of India.
According to police a local area commander of HUJI, Waliullah was directed by HUJI commander Maulana Asad Ullah to carry out the blasts. Waliullah acted as a conduit for the three terrorists sent from Bangladesh to carry out the attacks. The terrorists returned to Bangladesh after planting the bombs via Kolkata.
The fact that a Bangladesh based radical fundamentalist outfit can have branches in India is bad enough, that it plans to carry out attacks inside India is much worse. These incidents have once again highlighted the dangers of growing talibanisation of once liberal and tolerant Bangladesh under the current government. The recent attempts by the Bangladesh government to arrest the leaders of various militant outfits, coming at the fag-end of its tenure, are at best a case of too little too late.
For most of its tenure Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) government of Begum Khaleda Zia, has been a hostage to two of its smaller coalition partners Islamic Oika Jote (IOJ) and Jamaat-e-Islami a party that had opposed the creation of Bangladesh and had collaborated with Pakistani military junta during the liberation war. Both these Islamic parties succeeded in forcing the government to turn a blind eye to the violence perpetrated by Islamic extremists, who systematically encroached upon Bangladeshs traditional tolerance.
Minorities have been persecuted under the influence of these Islamic parties and the worst sufferers have been the Ahmediyas, who number around 100, 000 out of a total population of 140 million in Bangladesh. As they are regarded as apostates by some Muslims, they have been systematically persecuted during the current regime. Human Rights Watch in its report published in June 2005, had clearly established that the Ahmediyas were being subjected to a campaign of hate, discrimination, expropriation and violence. In January 2004, even their religious publications were banned at the behest of IOJ, ironically in a country that was initially set up as a secular republic and even today ostensibly claims to allow every citizen freedom to practice his own religion.
The telltale signs of fundamentalism have been there for all to see - the mushrooming of Madrassas, pressure on women to wear veil, suppression on traditional forms of entertainment, which have been termed as unislamic. The madrassas have been used as recruitment centres by the fundamentalists. Though a number of international publications highlighted the growth of fundamentalist organizations in Bangladesh and their possible links with Al Qaeda and other international Islamic groups, yet the government chose to turn a blind eye to this growing menace of fundamentalism. At first the BNP government flatly denied the existence of any of these Islamic groups in Bangladesh and even after February 2005 when it banned some of these organisations, its attempts have been half hearted. Despite the terrorists proclaiming their reach and strength to the world by blasting 400 bombs in 63 of Bangladeshs 64 districts on August 17, 2005, the governments attempts to control the menace have lacked the necessary intent.
The present Bangladeshi government has mastered the art of denying the obvious. Besides the presence of a number of Islamic terrorist organisations on its soil, it has routinely denied the presence of Indian insurgent groups fighting in Indias North East, even though media has published frequent reports not only about their presence but also about their meetings with various officials. Bangladeshi government also denies that there is any illegal migration from Bangladesh to India although even a blind man can feel the presence of these illegal migrants in most Indian cities. The increasing manifestation of violence by the Islamic groups including suicide attacks carried out in Ghazipur and Chittagong in November 2005 have however, forced the government to acknowledge their presence but its attempts to curb the menace have proved to be totally ineffective.
For too long has the international community considered the growing fundamentalism and radicalisation of Bangladeshi society as an internal problem of Bangladesh. However, the participation of Bangladeshi terrorists in attacks in Varanasi indicates that the involvement of Bangladesh based outfits in attack on American Centre in Kolkata on January 22, 2002, was not an isolated incident. Bangladesh has now started exporting terror and India, which shares a 4,095 km porous border with Bangladesh, is one of the prime targets. The Indian government therefore has a bonafide stake in preventing talibanisation of Bangladesh, as it not only threatens the liberal civil society in Bangladesh but also the peace and harmony in India.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/09/2006
05:25 ||
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ISRAELI military intelligence officials have accused President George W Bushs administration of undermining their attempts to infiltrate Al-Qaedas operations in Iraq by revealing the contents of a secret letter written by Osama Bin Ladens second-in-command, writes Uzi Mahnaimi.
Israel passed the letter in which Ayman al-Zawahiri outlined his Middle East strategy to Abu Musab al- Zarqawi, the Al-Qaeda leader in Iraq to Washington last October on condition of strict anonymity.
Israeli officials were dismayed, however, when John Negroponte, the US director of national intelligence, made it available in both English and its original Arabic on his office web site.
Bush then referred to it during his weekly address. The Al-Qaeda letter points to Vietnam as a model, the president declared. Al-Qaeda believes that America can be made to run again. They are gravely mistaken. America will not run and we will not forget our responsibilities.
Israeli intelligence sources said officials who had worked on Operation Tiramisu inside Iraq took emergency steps to protect their sources, but it was not clear how successful they had been in averting the damage to their intelligence network.
They said Bushs indiscretion had undone months of painstaking effort.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/09/2006
05:24 ||
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AT LEAST 400 Al-Qaeda terrorist suspects double the previous estimates are at large in Britain, according to police and MI5.
Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, director-general of MI5, has said the figure could be as high as 600 if all those thought to have returned from combat training in camps in Pakistan, Afghanistan and elsewhere are included.
The new assessment effectively a terror audit of Britain was confirmed this weekend by one of Britains most senior police officers, who warned that shortages of trained surveillance teams were undermining attempts to monitor all the suspects.
With about 400 terrorist suspects it requires a great deal of resources to investigate them, said James Hart, police commissioner of the City of London, a prime Al-Qaeda target. Its impossible. You simply have to make intelligent guesses about who to watch. Its a bit of a lottery.
Harts words carry weight because he helped co-ordinate the response to last Julys terror attacks in London. He is also on a committee of security chiefs responsible for protecting the capital from future attacks.
The figure of 400 has emerged from a reassessment by MI5 of the terrorist threat after the July 7 suicide bombings, which killed 52 innocent people. It is double the number of suspects that Lord Stevens, the former Metropolitan police commissioner, said last year were potentially able to carry out attacks in Britain.
The Joint Intelligence Committee of security chiefs has already warned that Al-Qaedas campaign against Britain and other western countries has been energised by the war in Iraq. Police chiefs now believe this will last at least 20 years.
Officials say the 400 include a hard core of between 40 and 60 trained fighters with the capability and the intention to carry out attacks in Britain.
There are other Islamic extremists around the edges of the 400 who could become active terrorists at any point. MI5 has already admitted it failed to follow up evidence that the July 7 ringleader Mohammed Siddiqui Khan was involved on the fringes of a terrorist plot.
In addition, MI5 has drawn up a thermal map of terror hotspots across Britain. The threat is said to be particularly acute in the Manchester area, where police have disclosed that several suspected would-be suicide bombers have been stopped at the airport en route for Iraq.
MI5 has received funds to open offices in Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Birmingham and Glasgow with others planned for Wales and the southwest.
But police say they are being hindered by lack of money. Hart said: Discussions are going on about how more resources can be put into this project. There is not enough money being put into this. We should be doing much more. We are talking about the safety of the United Kingdom.
Harts comments were backed by opposition MPs. Patrick Mercer, Tory spokesman for homeland security, said the government should act straight away to increase funding for counter-terrorism.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/09/2006
05:23 ||
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#1
AT LEAST 400 Al-Qaeda terrorist suspects --- double the previous estimates --- are at large in Britain, according to police and MI5.
Never mind that. The important thing is arresting visiting IDF officers and trying them for crimes against humanity.
#2
Make it a deportable crime (the kind where citizenship is first stripped, if necessary) to so much as belong to a terror organization... and no nonsense about "political arms." Then send them all back whence they came, with only what they were wearing when the police picked them up.
#3
I wouldn't be surprised if there were that many or more in the United States, as well. The truth is, we don't have a clue who's in our country, thanks to open borders and the civilian version of "don't ask, don't tell". Politicians! Curse them forever.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
04/09/2006 11:24
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Never mind that, OP. Ponder the Lackawanna Six, and the various gentlemen in Lodi, CA. The Lackawanna lads had been born here after the parents emigrated from Yemen, as I recall, and the Lodi gents were legally settled here after arriving from Pakistan. I hope someone is clever enough to be using that lovely relationship-linkng software (the one that's catching so many bad guys in Iraq) to connect people in-country as well. I suppose they must be though, if they know whose phonecalls to listen to...
A car bomb tore through a street crowded with pedestrians and vendors in Musayyib, a predominantly Shiite town, on Saturday, the authorities said, killing at least 6 people, wounding 21 and stoking sectarian tensions in Iraq.
The attack followed two others this week against major symbols of Shiite Islam that killed more than 80 and prompted political leaders to appeal for calm and unity.
Shortly before the attack on Saturday, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of the country's dominant Shiite political bloc, urged Shiites to resist attempts by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, to ignite a civil war. He called for Iraqis of all ethnicities and sects to rally together against the threat.
"This nation will not fall into the trap of sectarian war that is being pursued by Zarqawi's groups," he told hundreds of followers who gathered outside his political headquarters in Baghdad, Reuters reported.
Hundreds of mourners marched through Shiite neighborhoods of the capital on Saturday, in funeral corteges for the victims of a triple suicide bombing at the Baratha mosque on Friday that killed at least 71 people.
Wailing and beating their chests, the mourners carried wood coffins above their heads. The dead were bound for the vast Shiite cemetery in the holy city of Najaf.
The Baratha mosque, in northern Baghdad, remained closed to worshipers on Saturday as workers continued cleaning the building. An air of hopeless dread had settled in.
"We were afraid of going out and walking in the streets," said Um Raed, 40, the owner of a beauty salon. "I decided to close the shop and go away from this place and visit my sister so that I can sort of refresh myself of all this sadness. I cannot bear this atmosphere anymore."
That mosque bombing followed a car bomb on Thursday that killed at least 10 people in Najaf.
Musayyib is a poor industrial town that lies at the fault line between the predominantly Shiite south and a Sunni Arab insurgent stronghold south of Baghdad.
Insurgents have occasionally initiated attacks against residents and Shiite militias there. Last July, in one of the deadliest suicide attacks since the invasion, a man wrapped in explosives blew himself up under a fuel tanker in the center of the town, igniting a fireball that killed at least 71 people and wounded at least 156.
The police first reported that the attack on Saturday Musayyib was directed at an important Shiite mosque, but later retracted that account. The blast, which also wounded at least 21 people, was about two miles from the mosque.
Top leaders in the dominant Shiite alliance are to meet Sunday to discuss the bloc's selection of Ibrahim al-Jaafari as prime minister in the next government, according to Redha Jowad Taki, a leader in the alliance. Mr. Jaafari's nomination has generated widespread opposition and has become the single biggest hindrance to political talks. The Associated Press reported that the leaders had agreed to hold the meeting at the urging of the country's most revered Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.
The police recovered the bodies of 11 victims of killings around the country on Saturday, officials said. Seven were found in three Baghdad neighborhoods, according to an Interior Ministry official. The other four, all Iraqi contractors employed on an American military base near Tikrit, were found in the district of Hamreen, between Tikrit and Kirkuk.
A homemade bomb exploded next to a Shiite family's house in the neighborhood of Sadoun, in central Baghdad, killing two men inside the house, family members said. The family had recently fled their old home in the Dora neighborhood because of violence there.
The American military announced Saturday that a marine had died "from wounds sustained due to enemy action" in Anbar Province. Officials gave no further details.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/09/2006
05:21 ||
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Even with all the troubles that followed, Mohammad Gulab says he's still glad he saved the U.S. Navy SEAL. "I have no regrets for what I did," the 32-year-old Afghan told NEWSWEEK recently. "I'm proud of my action." Nevertheless, he says, "I never imagined I would pay such a price." Last June, foraging for edible plants in the forest near his home in the Kunar-province village of Sabray, Gulab discovered a wounded commando, the lone survivor of a four-man squad that had been caught in a Taliban ambush. Communicating by hand signs, Gulab brought the injured stranger home, fed and sheltered him for two days and helped contact a U.S. rescue team to airlift him out.
Gulab has been paying for his kindness ever since. Al Qaeda and the Taliban dominate much of Kunar's mountainous backcountry. Death threats soon forced Gulab to abandon his home, his possessions and even his pickup truck. Insurgents burned down his little lumber business in Sabray. He and his wife and their six children moved in with his brother-in-law near the U.S. base at Asadabad, the provincial capital. Three months ago Gulab and his brother-in-law tried going back to Sabray. Insurgents ambushed them. Gulab was unhurt, but his brother-in-law was shot in the chest and nearly died. The threats persist. "You are close to death," a letter warned recently. "You are counting your last days and nights."
Gulab's story says a lot about how Al Qaeda and its allies have been able to defy four and a half years of U.S. efforts to clear them out of Afghanistan. The key is the power they wield over villagers in strongholds like Kunar, on the Pakistani frontier. For years the province has been high on the list of suspected Osama bin Laden hideouts. "If the enemy didn't have local support, they couldn't survive here," says the deputy governor, Noor Mohammed. Since the Soviet occupation in the 1980s, jihadists have been amassing influence through scare tactics, tribal loyalties and cash. A little money can purchase big leverage in an area where entire villages sometimes subsist on a few thousand dollars a year, and many foreign jihadists have insinuated themselves into the Pashtun social fabric by marrying into local families. "The enemy knows the culture and exploits it," says Col. John Nicholson, who commands U.S. forces along several hundred miles of saw-toothed borderland.
Al Qaeda effectively owns much of Kunar. "There is little or no government control over most of the mountain villages," says an Afghan intelligence officer in Asadabad, asking not to be named because of the nature of his work. Many local Afghan officials are afraid to visit their home villages. Fighters entering Kunar from Pakistan have grown increasingly brazen in their movements. "This year they are so bold, they are coming in broad daylight," says the Afghan intelligence officer. Around Gulab's home village, even the natives stay out of certain areas that have been staked off by the jihadists.
Fear wasn't enough to keep Gulab from helping the commando he found in the woods last June. The Afghan says he had heard about the previous day's ambush and knew that local insurgents were hunting an American who had escaped, but Gulab believed he had to do the right thing. Under the mountain tribes' code of honorPashtunwali, they call itthere's a sacred duty to give shelter and assistance to anyone in need. Using gestures, Gulab indicated that he meant no harm. The injured stranger signed back that he understood and lowered his automatic rifle.
Word spread fast among Gulab's neighbors that he had taken an American into the village's protection. The jihadists soon heard the same thing. Their commander, an Afghan named Qari Muhammad Ismail, sent the villagers a written demand for the fugitive. Gulab and other village men answered with a message of their own: "If you want him, you will have to kill us all." Sabray has roughly 300 households altogether. "The Arabs and Taliban didn't want to fight the village," says Gulab.
The next night, Gulab and his neighbors took their guest to a nearby cave. For two days they took turns standing guard with his weapon while a village elder traveled to the Americans in Asadabad, carrying a letter the SEAL had written and a piece of his uniform. Four days after the ambush, a U.S. military team finally arrived to secure the village. That night a helicopter carried the wounded man and Gulab to the U.S. base.
There, Gulab says, the SEAL thanked him and promised to send him $200,000 as a reward. The Afghan also claims that U.S. officers, knowing that he and his family would be in danger because of his heroism, promised to relocate them to America within two months. (The military denies such an offer was made.) All he has now is a $250-a-month job at the base as a construction laborer. "I sacrificed everything," he says. "Now no one cares."
After several requests for comment on Gulab's story, NEWSWEEK got an e-mail from Col. Jim Yonts, a public-affairs officer in Kabul. "The U.S. military undertook many positive actions toward this individual and the other Afghans of the area to show our national gratitude and respect," he wrote. "I can not discuss the issue of the U.S. Navy SEAL promising money, but I can tell you that there was never an expectation to arrange relocation for this individual or his family." The military has no authority to make such an offer, he explained. The SEAL, who remains on active duty, declined to comment via his attorney, Alan Schwartz, an "entertainment lawyer" in Santa Monica, Calif. Gulab only shakes his head: "Why would anyone else want to cooperate with the U.S. now?"
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/09/2006
05:19 ||
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#1
This sucks,get this man and his family to the U.S.,and help his village with anything they want.
#2
It sounds like Mohammad Gulab has gotten greedy. However, it's a Newsweek article, so it's quite possible he never thought such things until the reporter talked to him... or that the reporter's pencil slipped out of control while the reporter was trying to write down exactly what Mohammad Gulab actually said, and the resulting article is translated from those squiggles. ;-)
#3
The part that rings true is the pressure the local terrorists are putting on Gulab and his villagers. That is how the Taliban came to power in the first place. The rest I'm not sure about.
#4
yeah alot got changed in translation i bet. but, if the man and his family want too come too the US , i say let them. hell we let alot of ppl who wouldn't piss on us if we where on fire here every day
#5
bring them here and set them up - they deserve nothing less, and it sends a message - we take care of our friends
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/09/2006 14:58
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#6
This may be small but it would help set an example, that by keeping our service men safe, we can do our best to provide reasonable security. Intelligence should atleast give him a job, but instead Gulab only shakes his head: "Why would anyone else want to cooperate with the U.S. now?"
As American tanks rumbled into Baghdad three years ago, Omar al-Damaluji took to the streets of the bomb-battered city with an old Canon camera and a singular mission.
An amateur photographer and civil engineering professor at Baghdad University, Damaluji crisscrossed the capital, ducking into doorways during firefights and snapping 15 rolls of film in two weeks. He knew his beloved Baghdad would never be the same, he recalled, and he wanted to document the transformation.
"This is how it looked. This is how my city looked," he said as he sat before a computer in his well-appointed study one recent afternoon, armed men manning a makeshift checkpoint on the quiet street outside. He clicked through before-and-after photographs of a government ministry, first shown with pristine white walls and a tidy yard, then with smoke billowing from a fractured roof.
"It was never a paradise," Damaluji, now 50, said with a sigh. "But Baghdad has become a wretched place."
Three years after U.S. forces swept Saddam Hussein's government from power, car bombings and political assassination are near-daily occurrences. Neighborhoods, now torn along sectarian lines, are plagued by increasingly violent militias and dysfunctional public services, and occupied by tens of thousands of foreign troops. Some analysts are beginning to compare Baghdad with another Middle Eastern capital that was synonymous with anarchy and bloodshed in the 1970s and '80s.
"In Beirut when the civil war began, you had electricity 24 hours a day and running water all the time, and the air conditioning was working, and so were the elevators," said Francois Heisbourg, a French military analyst. "In the case of Baghdad, it looks like Beirut after 10 years of civil war."
U.S. officials here have predicted that 2006 will mark the battle for Baghdad, and both insurgent attacks and the effort to stop them are increasingly focused on this city of about 7 million people. Until the situation in the capital is normalized, they say, the United States will not be able to argue that it has brought peace and stability to Iraq.
"As Baghdad goes, so goes the rest of the country," said Michael P. Fallon, head of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Iraq reconstruction programs. "We are now consciously bumping up our efforts in the Baghdad area."
Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, a top U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, said that "if you think like the enemy," the issues would be: "Where is the center of gravity for the people of Iraq? Where do I focus my effort? Where are my attacks going to have the most significant effects worldwide? So he's focused on Baghdad."
Referring to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born leader of the insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq, Lynch said, "We're convinced that Zarqawi now is zooming in on Baghdad." And so is the United States. "There is indeed a focused effort on Baghdad, both for security and improvement of the basic conditions in Baghdad, so that by the end of 2006 you see a markedly different city," Lynch said.
When U.S. troops arrived here on April 9, 2003, they found a giddy and apprehensive capital and a weary populace that appeared willing to give them a chance. U.S. officials predicted that American troops would be welcomed as liberators and that the transfer of authority to new Iraqi leaders would be quick. Instead, a powerful anti-U.S. insurgency took root, led in part by homegrown backers of Hussein and in part by foreign fighters loyal to Zarqawi.
Baghdad has borne the brunt of the bloodshed. According to a January tally by Iraq Body Count, a British antiwar group, more than 20,000 people have been killed in Baghdad since the March 2003 invasion, accounting for almost 60 percent of the group's estimate of civilian deaths throughout Iraq. Roughly a quarter of the 2,350 U.S. military deaths in Iraq have occurred in the capital.
Since the beginning of this year, there have been more than 2,500 violent incidents in Baghdad, according to statistics supplied by the U.S. military. They include more than 900 roadside bombings -- about 10 per day -- at least 84 car bombs, 70 cases of people firing rocket-propelled grenades, 55 drive-by shootings, hundreds of small-arms attacks and political and sectarian assassinations, and dozens of mortar, grenade and sniper attacks.
"Weapons are spread in huge quantities among people. Strangers come from other areas to shoot and kill," said Ahmed Salah, 28, a lawyer in the northern Baghdad neighborhood of Adhamiyah. "To protect ourselves, people of our neighborhood started guarding the areas at night."
In the most visible sign of the breakdown in law and order, unmarked cars with plainclothes gunmen hanging out the windows are commonplace. Members of private Western security companies, with no authority but their guns, commandeer entire roads, threatening to fire on anyone who approaches. Sectarian and ethnic militias control large neighborhoods, sometimes dressed in uniforms of the country's security forces. Gunfire routinely breaks the silence; virtually no one is held accountable when someone is shot. On Saturday, an 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew was scheduled.
U.S. military officials say that foreign fighters and terrorists, particularly those tied to Zarqawi, are the source of most of the violence in Baghdad. They contend that his strategy of targeting Shiite Muslim civilians to try to precipitate a civil war is backfiring and that the eventual formation of a new national unity government with Kurdish, Shiite and Sunni Arab political parties will diminish his disruptive power. Furthermore, the U.S. military is providing extensive training and mentoring to thousands of Iraqi policemen, hoping they will fill the city's security vacuum and gain the confidence of the people, who otherwise will turn to militias to protect them.
"This is really, in the grand scheme of things, what needs to happen here," said Maj. Gen. Joseph Peterson, who oversees training of the Iraqi police. Once it does, he said, foreign investment will pick up, creating jobs for the hundreds of thousands of unemployed young men in Baghdad who are potential recruits for al-Qaeda in Iraq.
The most treacherous parts of Baghdad are the south and west, Sunni Arab enclaves where sympathy for the insurgency is strong. The U.S. commander in western Baghdad, Col. Jeffrey Snow, of the Army's 1st Brigade, 10th Mountain Division, said violence has ebbed and flowed during his eight months in Iraq. Lately, he said, Shiite militias have intensified attacks against Sunni civilians and armed groups.
But like many American commanders, Snow says security in his area of operation is not as bad as perceived. "A lot of folks would like to say we're on the verge of civil war, but that is not consistent with my opinion," he said in a recent interview. Iraq's security forces are making steady progress, he said, and Muslim clerics in his area, with whom he maintains close relations, have consistently called for calm.
In response to what he described as a population that by and large still feels uneasy, Snow said, his unit has begun conducting weekly and sometimes daily public opinion surveys. Among the standard form's 10 questions: "In what area do you think the security forces should focus its efforts to provide better security?" And "Do you know where the terrorists are in this area? If yes, where?"
While acknowledging that many people might not tell him the truth, Snow said the responses allow him to focus attention where it is needed most. "We have seen an improvement in people's perceptions of their own security since we began doing this," he said.
But while many Baghdad residents say security is the most important issue to be addressed, other concerns are not far behind. Virtually all public services -- particularly water, sewerage and electricity -- are functioning at levels worse than before the war, despite billions of dollars spent on reconstruction. Gasoline lines stretch for miles, despite the country's vast oil reserves. The city is a maze of no-go zones, with miles of 15-foot-high concrete barriers and dozens of streets that are closed by sandbags, gates, Jersey barriers and armed guards.
"Statistics show that billions have been spent on Baghdad, but most of the money goes into small, day-to-day projects that will have no impact, and we consider it lost," Mayor Sabir al-Isawi said in an interview at his spacious office in Baghdad's city hall, known as Amanat. He said that about 10 city employees are killed each week, and that trash collection and other public services cannot be provided in some neighborhoods.
"These projects leave a bad impression about Americans," he said.
Many independent analysts here say they do not believe that Baghdad or Iraq has descended into the kind of full-blown civil war in which sectarian militias engage in gun battles and artillery duels and residents pack up and move in massive numbers. The key to avoiding such a scenario, the analysts said, will be the ability of Iraq's newly formed and largely untested army not to fracture along sectarian lines and to remain loyal to the nation rather than to individual factions.
"We have a low-level civil war that could spin further out of control and escalate, with militias directly attacking each other with heavy weapons and the army fracturing along ethnic lines and joining the fray," said Joost Hiltermann, an Iraq analyst with the nongovernmental International Crisis Group in Amman, Jordan.
"Despite the bad security situation, I am optimistic," said Ali Hussein, 46, who lives in the Amiriyah neighborhood in western Baghdad. Salaries have gone up since the U.S. invasion, he said, and the Iraqi army is improving. "Everything comes gradually. People should know that what is happening is not easy. It takes time."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/09/2006
05:15 ||
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#2
Seals' fur, gromgoru? Sounds fascinating, but a bit obscure for me to understand.
Separately, MSNBC's news amalgamator must be giggling with relief today, at all the article he found (this one came from the Washington Post) describing the disaster we've created over there. It sounds like the good professor who opens the article, however expert with a camera, never had a daughter at risk from the attentions of Uday or Qusay, or a son who got up the nose of Saddam Husseins minions, nor knew anyone who did. How fortunate for him to have been able to remain so happily ignorant.
Some analysts are beginning to compare Baghdad with another Middle Eastern capital that was synonymous with anarchy and bloodshed in the 1970s and '80s. And there's the buried lede, at the end of paragraph five.
#5
Iraq the Model claims the Mosque attack earlier this week was ordered by "outside forces" and carried out by Zarqawi, to promote civil war. He also says that Sadr is "picking a fight" with the US to increase sectarian tension and force the outbreak of civil war.
In any situation, whoever controls Baghdad will eventually control the country. Jafaari has to leave, and Sadr and his militia crushed, if any stability is going to be achieved. When we do crush Sadr, it absolutely MUST be a joint effort between the US and the Iraqi army, or we go back to square one and start over. Regardless of who does what, Sadr and his Iranian-backed militia have to be totally crushed before there can be ANY peace in Iraq.
(Prepared at 10:30AM, Sunday, Apr 9, but unable to upload to Rantburg. Will continue to try)
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
04/09/2006 13:12
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A car bomb killed at least six Shi'ite pilgrims south of Baghdad on Saturday, the latest in a wave of attacks that had prompted a fresh warning against civil war in Iraq.
The blast in the Shi'ite town of Musayib also wounded 16 people, said police Captain Muthana al-Ma'amouri.
Enraged town residents at the scene of the blast threw stones at U.S. troops in Humvees who fired warning shots in the air. One man also blamed fractious Iraqi leaders, who are struggling to form a government four months after elections.
"This is because of the Americans. It is their doing while (our) politicians just sit in their seats of power. Is this what they call a democracy?," he yelled as people picked up thick pieces of shrapnel.
Just two hours earlier, powerful Shi'ite leader Abdul Aziz al-Hakim had urged his followers to stand firm against what he called an al Qaeda campaign to ignite sectarian civil war with bombings like one on Friday that killed at least 70 people.
That triple suicide bombing at the Buratha mosque in Baghdad, the biggest single suicide attack on a Shi'ite target since November 2005, raised fresh fears of a full-blown communal conflict, with the United States, Britain and the United Nations quickly urging Iraqi unity.
On Thursday, a car bomb near one of the world's most sacred Shi'ite shrines killed at least 15 people in the southern town of Najaf.
Hakim's speech, delivered on the anniversary of the execution of top Shi'ite cleric Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr and his sister by Saddam Hussein, called for unity between Iraq's main Shi'ite, Kurdish and Arab Sunni communities.
But he also reminded majority Shi'ites of their decades of suffering under Saddam's Sunni-dominated regime and urged them to resist attempts by the al Qaeda leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al Zarqawi, to plunge the country into open civil war.
"(Sunni) militants and insurgents want to return Iraq to Saddam's formula," said Hakim, leader of the pro-Iranian Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), a party in the ruling Shi'ite Alliance.
"This nation will not fall into the trap of sectarian war that is being pursued by Zarqawi's groups."
Sectarian tensions have been rising since the bombing of a Shi'ite shrine on February 22 touched off reprisals and pushed Iraq to the brink of civil war.
Hundreds of bodies of people shot or strangled have turned up on Baghdad streets bound, blindfolded and showing signs of torture.
The latest bombs provided more proof that Iraqi leaders deadlocked over a government are unable to tackle the bloodshed which is consuming the country.
Hakim's Alliance is under intense pressure to replace Ibrahim al-Jaafari as its nominee for prime minister to break the deadlock over postwar Iraq's first full-term government.
But Jaafari, who is the serving prime minister, refuses to step aside despite calls from Sunni and Kurdish leaders who say he has failed in office, and even from within his own Alliance.
Hakim said repeatedly that Zarqawi and Saddam loyalists would fail to derail the political process. But he could offer no clear timetable on the formation of a government.
"After the guidelines of the (Shi'ite) religious establishment, we will proceed to form a national unity government as soon as possible," he said.
Interior Minister Bayan Jabor has said he was confident that Zarqawi was no longer a serious threat. But Western intelligence sources disagree and Hakim seems just as concerned as ever, saying the whole region would suffer if he is not defeated.
"The battle of today is not just an Iraqi battle. Other countries will suffer and in the future there will be more suffering," he said. "These militant groups oppose all Arab rulers."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/09/2006
05:14 ||
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THE festering refugee camp of Khan Yunis, where the stench of sewage hangs over potholed dirt roads and concrete blockhouses crowded with 270,000 Palestinians, has long been fertile soil for radical groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Now there are growing indications it is also becoming a breeding ground for Al-Qaeda.
Palestinian security officials claim to have growing evidence that Osama Bin Ladens terror network, which has hitherto shown little interest in Gaza and the West Bank, is recruiting among the angry young men who see little beyond a future of attacking Israel.
The organisation has been helped by the lawlessness that has engulfed the Palestinian territories since Hamas emerged as the surprise winner of parliamentary elections on January 25 and formed a government.
There is such despair in Gaza: some are ready to sacrifice anything and this creates fertile soil for growing Al-Qaeda, said Ashraf Juma, a former Fatah fighter who spent 18 years in Israeli prisons and is now a Palestinian legislator representing Rafah a city that like nearby Khan Yunis is an ideal recruitment area.
They support Al-Qaeda because they are angry at the American support for Israel and they see Al-Qaeda hurting the Americans. We have a proverb to describe this: The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, has denounced Hamas for taking part in elections under Israeli occupation and claimed that Palestinians had other choices taken as a reference to his organisation.
Analysts believe that, as its fortunes wane in Iraq, Al-Qaeda thinks some form of coup in Gaza or the West Bank could help it increase support across the Middle East, where the fate of the Palestinians is a symbol of the wider Arab cause.
Any group that wants to fight will have no problem finding weapons; Gaza is awash with guns. Hamass policy on rooting out Al-Qaeda is contradictory. Security forces charged with tracking down the organisation have no guidelines and Hamas has said it will not arrest anyone resisting Israel. Meanwhile police officers have not been paid for March and there is scant prospect of any wages arriving soon.
No one knows what is the security policy of the interior minister, said Samir Masharawi, head of Fatah in Gaza, who liaises between the various Palestinian factions and hopes he will not have to add Al-Qaeda to his list.
Hamass main strategy has been resistance and jihad, and now they are the government, they are embarrassed to say we should arrest those who are making attacks (on Israel).
Even he is worried; the interview, conducted in his house, was punctuated by the sound of shells fired into Gaza by Israeli tanks just across the border.
The treasury is empty: Hamas needs £68.8m to pay 140,000 government workers. The Americans, Canadians and Europeans have cut funding to try to pressure the organisation into moderating its outright rejection of an Israeli state.
The lack of direction from the top was a cause of black humour at Gazas central police station last week, where they joked that the only word they had heard from Said al-Siyam, the new interior minister, was that they should grow beards.
The laughter stopped when gunfire erupted all around: I was hustled inside while police fired back at their assailants, only to shout stop firing when they realised they were fellow policemen. We have other things to worry about, as you see, said Abdul Rahman, an officer.
It is almost impossible to underestimate the extent of the lawlessness that now reigns. Last month two families went to war over a donkey that kicked and damaged a car. The death toll had reached six by the time they ended their feud.
It is difficult to get concrete answers on policy from Hamas beyond details such as the beard directive. In an interview over cups of sweet coffee, Ismail Haniya, the prime minister and supposed moderate face of the party, said he wanted to focus on civil affairs such as disorder and tribal conflicts.
But there was no public budging from Hamass refusal to recognise Israel, although privately the organisation has conceded that it could negotiate on the basis of the borders of 1967, when Israel seized the West Bank and Gaza, but it needs time to win over its members.
Would Hamas agree to a two-state solution? Before we negotiate with Israel, we need to know on what basis, he said. We want a Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as its capital. Even the translator was foxed. Did that mean Hamas agreed to a two-state solution? I didnt say that. Haniya was clear, however, in his denunciation of the West. The decisions taken by the American administration and the West have only one aim, to blackmail our government.
While Hamas fiddles, the clock is ticking in Israel. Ehud Olmert, the new prime minister, has made it clear that unless Hamas recognises Israel and renounces violence he will largely withdraw from the West Bank, while setting borders that run deep into the occupied territory to take in large Jewish settlements.
There is predictable schadenfreude among members of the former Fatah administration, who were constantly undermined by Hamass attacks on Israel before the group took over the administration.
Hamas is acting as if it is isolated on the moon and can keep two identities, government and opposition, said Rashid abu Shabak, a Fatah leader appointed last week by President Mahmoud Abbas, despite Hamass furious objections, as security director for the West Bank and Gaza. Hamas jumped overnight from being the group that attacked Israel to the government that has to arrest people who do that.
In the meantime, as the occupied territories slip deeper into chaos, Yusef al-Siam, the preventive security chief of Rafah, is worried that he has less to do.
Had his work become more difficult as the situation deteriorates? Im less busy, he said. I used to arrest Hamas. Now theyre the government.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/09/2006
05:12 ||
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So ... no need to change UK policy on Londonistan. Color me skeptical here.
The official inquiry into the 7 July London bombings will say the attack was planned on a shoestring budget from information on the internet, that there was no 'fifth-bomber' and no direct support from al-Qaeda, although two of the bombers had visited Pakistan.
The first forensic account of the atrocity that claimed the lives of 52 people, which will be published in the next few weeks, will say that attacks were the product of a 'simple and inexpensive' plot hatched by four British suicide bombers bent on martyrdom.
Far from being the work of an international terror network, as originally suspected, the attack was carried out by four men who had scoured terror sites on the internet. Their knapsack bombs cost only a few hundred pounds, according to the first completed draft of the government's definitive report into the blasts.
The Home Office account, compiled by a senior civil servant at the behest of Home Secretary Charles Clarke, also discounts the existence of a fifth bomber. After the bombings, police found an unused rucksack of explosives in the bombers' abandoned car at Luton station, which led to a manhunt for a missing suspect. Similarly, it found nothing to support the theory that an al-Qaeda fixer, presumed to be from Pakistan, was instrumental in planning the attacks.
A Whitehall source said: 'The London attacks were a modest, simple affair by four seemingly normal men using the internet.'
Confirmation of the nature of the attacks will raise fresh concerns over the vulnerability of Britain to an attack by small, unsophisticated groups. A fortnight after 7 July, an unconnected group of four tried to duplicate the attack, but their devices failed to detonate.
However, the findings will draw criticism for failing to address concerns as to why no action was taken against the bombers despite the fact that one of them, Mohammed Siddique Khan, was identified by intelligence officers months before the attack. A report into the attack by the Commons intelligence and security committee, which could be published alongside the official narrative, will question why MI5 called off surveillance of the ringleader of the 7 July bombings.
Patrick Mercer, shadow homeland security spokesman, said the official narrative's findings would only lead to calls for an independent inquiry to answer further questions surrounding 7 July.
He said: 'A series of reports such as this narrative simply does not answer questions such as the reduced terror alert before the attack, the apparent involvement of al-Qaeda and links to earlier or later terrorist plots.'
The official Home Office report into the attacks does, however, decide that the four suicide bombers - Siddique Khan, Hasib Hussain, Shehzad Tanweer and Jermaine Lindsay - were partly inspired by Khan's trips to Pakistan, though the meeting between the four men and known militants in Pakistan is seen as ideological, rather than fact-finding.
A videotape of Mohammed Siddique Khan released after the attacks also featured footage of Osama bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri. The Home Office believes the tape was edited after the suicide attacks and dismisses it as evidence of al-Qaeda's involvement in the attack.
Khan is confirmed as ringleader of the attacks, though the Yorkshire-born bomber's apparent links to other suspected terrorists are not discussed for legal reasons.
The report also investigates the psychological make-up and behaviour of the four bombers during the run-up to the attack. Using intelligence compiled in the nine months since, the account paints a portrait of four British men who in effect led double lives.
It exposes how the quartet adopted an extreme interpretation of Islam, juxtaposed with a willingness to enjoy a 'western' lifestyle - in particular Jermaine Lindsay, the bomber from Berkshire.
According to the report, the attacks were largely motivated by concerns over foreign policy and the perception that it was deliberately anti-Muslim, although the four men were also driven by the promise of immortality.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/09/2006
05:10 ||
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#1
The Home Office account, compiled by a senior civil servant
I wonder what MI-5 and -6, and the new British FBI, have to say on the subject. Also, what the American intelligence agencies, including Military Intelligence, think.
#1
It appears that the Iranian troops either don't believe in overhead cover, or the environment is so devoid of timbers or other structural supports to make such cover possible. Just stand off and rain VT artillery down on them, and they're history.
#5
interesting how they are all (bar one) shots taken in good daylight hours - my point being what capability do the Iranians have to scrap during the night time? my guess is that 95% of that stuff is useless at night time, thats gotta be a big kicka for them if they wanted to keep tempo fast on any ops they might try.
#14
This photo, 13_8501170180_L600, of the tug with the huge forward superstructure landing the helicopter, is one of my favorites. Talk about a radar cross section begging for a hit!
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
04/09/2006 14:30
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#15
apparently, the mono-brow is required?
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/09/2006 17:17
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#16
It appears that the Iranian troops either don't believe in overhead cover
Poorly trained and led troops don't dig in, camouflage their positions, do range cards, etc.
"Netko" wrote in message
news:0001HW.C05DD0E1001E903AF04885B0@nntp.dsl.pipex.com...
> On Sat, 8 Apr 2006 11:21:56 +0100, PLMerite wrote
> (in message <89MZf.468$8g3.223@trnddc02>):
>
>> These guys are all dead a day after the shooting starts
>
> You think?
>
> I assume these pictures are from the Great Prophet exercises of the
> past week. Nice find. Thanks for posting them.
>
> Also, what's the story with the half dozen or so 132-part files you
> posted towards the end of the series? My server has still only got
> the first part of each, nearly 10 hours later. Is this my server's
> fault or did you cancel the post or something?
My bad. They don't have a file extension at the end and I didn't check.
Put .jpg on the end and they'll work okay. They came up okay in my browser
and I just right-clicked 'em into a folder and posted them from there.
JEDDAH Saudi journalist Rabah Al-Quwayi, 24, has been detained by Hail authorities in connection with his writings posted on Internet forums, which they allege place his Islamic faith in doubt.
Heresy, by Allan! Fire up the auto-da-fe!
Al-Quwayi, a reporter for the Riyadh-based daily Shams, has been in Hail police custody since Monday. They asked me about topics I wrote on the Internet four years ago, Al-Quwayi told Arab News from his detention center.
Hail police chief Gen. Nasser Al-Nowaisser said Al-Quwayi is detained under a warrant requested by the Grand Inquisition Commission for Prosecution and Investigation. Our job was to execute the warrant. As his case is not a public offense, we have nothing to do with the course of the investigation, said Al-Nowaisser.
When Arab News contacted Ahmad Al-Mashhour from the Hail office of the commission, he refused to comment on the case. Lawyer Abdul Rahman Al-Lahem announced yesterday that he would be representing Al-Quwayi. The lawyer said he is still unclear who the plaintiffs in the case are; nobody has come forward as the accusers. The commission has the legal right to detain any suspect for up to six months, said Al-Lahem, but the reasons have to be clear. The crime must be a serious one, like drug-trafficking, theft, or when there is a likelihood of the suspect fleeing the country, said the lawyer.
The story of Al-Quwayis detention goes back to November when he was based in Hail as a part-time reporter for the Okaz newspaper. He said that unidentified people had been tracking his postings on Internet forums regarding religious extremism. His car was subsequently vandalized and a note was left on the dashboard that said: In the name of God, the Most Gracious and the Most Merciful: This time it is your car but next time it is you. Return to your religion and forsake heresy. This is the last warning.
"We kills heretics in these here parts!"
Al-Quwayi says that he believes the harassment is based on his Internet writing and not anything hes published in the two newspapers he has worked for. In a telephone interview with Arab News on Tuesday night, Al-Quwayi said that authorities in Hail contacted him asking him to come in and fill out some paperwork related to his complaints of harassment that stem from the incidents last November. He responded that he had obligations at his job and couldnt come in. The police sent an explanation letter to the editor in chief of the paper, and Al-Quwayi was given permission to go to the police station. He was immediately arrested upon arrival. Police told him they had discarded his complaints of harassment and opened a new investigation into his Islamic faith. They told me that if I didnt complain to the police in the first place they wouldnt have suspected my beliefs, said Al-Quwayi.
Al-Quwayi said the commission inquisitors investigators were peppering him with questions that were meant to determine his religious knowledge. He added that commission inquisitors investigators argued with him on topics he posted on the Internet four years ago.
"I told them 'E pur se muove,' but they didn't get it. Looks like I'm gonna be burned at the stake. G'bye, Mom!"
Lawyer Al-Lahem said that now that hes taken on the case, his first steps would be to review the warrant to make sure it has been done according to proper procedure, and to request the case be moved to Riyadh where he and his client live.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/09/2006
01:06 ||
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Poor bastard is rotting in Hail. (Sorry, couldn't resist.)
#2
Witnesses named the senior commander as Eyad Abu Al-Ein of the PRC. Abu Al-Ein, who is also a bomb maker, had brought his daughter and son to watch training exercises at the base.
Medics said his son, 5, was killed and his wife was seriously injured. They had earlier said his daughter had been killed, but later the family identified the dismembered body as the son, medics added.
Such a lovely family outing. "Come children, Daddy's giong to take you to work and teach you to blow up joooooos." And the dead kids are somehow Israel's fault.
BEIRUT (Rantburg News Service): Hizbullah's deputy secretary-general says he expects President Emile Lahoud to remain in office until the last day of his current mandate, and maybe until Doomsday, despite the best efforts of the populace to evict him. In an interview with the Arab daily Ad-Diyar published Saturday, Sheikh Naim Qassem insisted that anyone who wants to undertake change must first provide justification, ideas, mechanisms, a crowbar, and enough evidence to persuade other parties who don't want to be persuaded. "The fact that Emile was installed as a puppet president by the Syrians doesn't count," he said, stressing that any alternative candidate could only assume the reins of power in 20 months. "We like Syrians. We think it's fine that they choose our president."
He added that the recent clash between Lahoud and Prime Minister Fouad Siniora in Khartoum was all Siniora's fault, and that it had not not orchestrated by MP Saad Hariri. He added that he pitied MP Walid Jumblatt and accused him of being influenced by the United States. "Far better," he added, "for him to be influenced by a powerful, successful regime closer to home, like... ummm... Syria."
In another interview published Saturday, pro-Hizbullah MP Hassan Fadlallah agreed with Qassem's prediction that the president would complete his mandate because there is no agreement on any alternative candidate so far. "Most people agree they don't want Emile, of course," he stated, "but so far we've managed to keep the pot stirred enough so that there's no one single candidate to replace him. As long as everyone's at each other's throats, he'll be fine. I'll admit, for a while there I thought he'd be out on his ear by the end of March, but if we can keep this up, he'll finish out his term. He'll be ineffectual, and he'll always be one step from being bounced, and he'll be a national embarrassment, but who knows? Something might turn up. This is Lebanon, where the politix are so convoluted you sometimes find yourself voting against yourself."
Commenting on the Shebaa Farms issue, Fadlallah argued that demarcating the border in the area would not be possible until the full withdrawal of Israeli forces from them and a resumption of ties with Syria. "How can we possibly determine if it's ours or Syria's when they're sitting on it? Sure, the Syrians have said it's not theirs, but how do we know that? Far better to keep Hizbollah in the south, with as many guns as they can carry, firing the occasional missile or artillery shell into Israel. That's the only way we can ensure peace in the region."
In comments to the central New Agency, Hizbullah's commander in South Lebanon said the party had no qualms about creating a problem for the U.S. and its political plans in the Middle East: "On the contrary," Sheikh Nabil Qaouk said, "this honors us. What are we here for, if not to create problems? With no problems, there's no justification for our existence, so the more problems the better."
His comments came in response to US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's claim this week that Hizbullah was Lebanon's "biggest problem." Qaouk added that U.S. interference in Lebanon was hampering national unity and consensus. He also expressed gratitude at Syria's support of Lebanon's right to liberate its territories and resist to Israeli aggression and adoration of the sublime leadership of the noble Bashir Assad, calling the man a saint.
Meanwhile, Lahoud met Friday with his only friends outside of Hizbollah, the head of Parliament's Popular Bloc in Zahle, Elie Skaff, former Minister Suleiman Franjieh, former Minister Talal Arslan and former MP Emile Lahoud Junior, to plot a comeback.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/09/2006
00:33 ||
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Unfortunately that is true. Even though I think Condi would be a most excellent POTUS. I just can't see the MSM (and NYT in particular) giving her the title 'First Woman President of the United States' without choking.
On that day they will simply stop the 'First Woman ...' so that they wouldn't have to.
UNITED NATIONS (AP) - U.N. Security Council members agree the war crimes trial of former Liberian President Charles Taylor should be moved from Sierra Leone to the Netherlands and could adopt a resolution next week to allow the transfer, the council president said.
Since Slobo's suite cell is suddenly available.
China's U.N. Ambassador Wang Guangya said the Security Council was still debating several issues, including who should pay the costs. He scheduled closed-door consultations Monday on the draft resolution and said he expected it to be adopted "early next week." "I think there is agreement that he is going to be moved to The Hague," Wang said Friday. "Now, it's only the technical side, how the resolution will look ... (so) there will be no misunderstandings, no concerns."
The U.N.-backed Special Court in Sierra Leone has requested that Taylor's trial be moved out of West Africa for security reasons. Taylor has pleaded not guilty to 11 counts of war crimes stemming from his alleged backing of Sierra Leone's rebels, who terrorized victims by chopping off their arms, legs, ears and lips.
The draft resolution states that the costs of trying Taylor in the Netherlands "are expenses of the Special Court" in Sierra Leone, which is funded by voluntary contributions. It reiterates an appeal to U.N. member states "to contribute generously" to the court.
And we know how well that works.
In a March 29 letter to the Security Council, the Netherlands emphasized that the Special Court must shoulder the costs of the trial and "that no additional costs shall be incurred by the Netherlands without its consent." A U.N. appeal for $25 million to fund the Special Court for Sierra Leone this year has so far received only $9 million in pledges and $6 million in funding, which is expected to run out soon.
U.S. Mission spokesman Benjamin Chang said the United States would seriously consider the request "because we want the court to be able to bring Charles Taylor to justice."
As usual, Uncle Sugar steps up, and without any thanks.
The Dutch government also asked for assurances that once a verdict is reached, Taylor would immediately be transferred out of the Netherlands. Sweden and Austria said Wednesday they had received requests to imprison Taylor if he is convicted, but no decision has been announced.
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/09/2006
00:23 ||
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System's been stable since I kicked the BVOE.de people out. We're still under attack by someone from bt.net in the UK. They've been hammering us for about 36 hours now. Eventually they'll go away, I think, since they're just bouncing off the iptables. So we seem to have weathered that crisis.
I spoke too soon. We're still being hammered on port 80 as of 12.30. I've blocked one IP address is Illinois, and I'm trying to run down the rest. This is getting tiresome.
Posted by: Duke Nukem ||
04/09/2006 6:38
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#5
The things we've all learnt since Rantburg came on-line! Fred, your brain must be as big as a house by now. My thanks to you and our colourful moderators for continuing to shoulder the burden to keep this wonderful place open for business.
#7
You know (and you didn;t hear this from me) there are places on the web where you can download "email bombs" that can be targeted on these bastards.
Not that I would condone such activities, but there are lots of other little "hacker attack" programs that could cause these sobs no end of their own problems.
Tehran, Iran, Apr. 07 Iranian police held up a 10-year-old girl in Tehrans Mehrabad Airport for mal-veiling, state-run Persian-language websites reported on Friday.
The incident took place Tuesday afternoon as the unnamed girl and her father were in the airport heading to the city of Kerman. Security officers held up the girl and accused her of wearing too short a manteau the knee-length over-garment that all women must wear outdoors under Irans Islamic laws.
The report said that the girls father became incensed at the officers conduct towards his daughter and began to yell that his daughter knew more about Islam than they did. What crime has my daughter committed? he yelled, as he slapped her once out of frustration.
He's frustrated at the police, so he slaps her? This explains a lot of what's wrong over there.
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/09/2006
00:21 ||
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#1
Misogynistic mental cases. islams real face. The face of opression of women, children minorities and any other faith.
Posted by: SPoD ||
04/09/2006 0:32
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BEIRUT: Serge Brammertz, the head of the UN probe investigating the assassination of former Premier Rafik Hariri, "is expected to meet with the Syrian leadership this weekend," judicial sources said Friday. The sources added that Brammertz "will also be meeting with several Syrian officials," without identifying them, and that "he will be requesting answers regarding new-found evidence and important information."
The UN probe's spokesperson told The Daily Star in a telephone interview that the investigation had no comment on Brammertz's moves or the course of his work. One of the reports circulating in the Lebanese media on Friday said that "Brammertz will most likely meet with Syrian President Bashar Assad and Syrian Vice-President Farouq al-Sharaa on Sunday." Lebanese daily An-Nahar quoted a Syrian source as saying that the meeting with Assad would be "an ordinary one that is part of Assad's regular reception of visitors." The paper added: "The president will also brief Brammertz on developments in Syrian-Lebanese relations."
Brammertz has already made two trips to Syria, during which he met with Sharaa and Riad Daoudi, the legal advisor to the Syrian Foreign Ministry. He has also met with Daoudi in Beirut. In a report which he presented to the UN Security Council in mid-March, Brammertz said he would be meeting with Assad and Sharaa in April.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/09/2006
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Tehran, Iran, Apr. 07 Irans State Security Forces (SSF) tied a young man to a wall in Tehran on charges of causing trouble, the government-run news agency Fars reported on Friday.
If he had been a she, they would have hung her.
The man, who was identified only by his first name Mohammad, was 24 years old according to the report which also carried photos of him being tied to the wall. Mohammad was arrested Thursday afternoon in Tehrans Khavaran district on the charge of hooliganism, the report said. After being taken to a local police station, the SSF chief in greater Tehran ordered him tied to a wall as part of the police strategy of introducing trouble-makers to the public, it added.
Iranian officials often refer to millions of unemployed young men, who are largely beset by frustration and despair, as trouble-makers.
Straight out of the Soviet dictionary.
The report added that on Wednesday, a trouble-maker from another district of Tehran was street-paraded. Authorities frequently parade youths, forced to sit backwards on donkeys, in their local neighbourhood so as to embarrass and humiliate them. Such punishments are often used for petty crimes such as alcohol consumption, disregarding nightly curfews, and disrespect towards security agents.
There was also a separate report that authorities went ahead with tying a teenager to a tree in public in Tehran on Thursday. The 18-year-old, identified only by his first name Mostafa, was tied to a tree in public in the Iranian capitals district of Razi for four hours. Mostafa was also accused of being a trouble-maker.
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/09/2006
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#1
Heh. Must've been one hell of a firesale they cut with Putin - even the headgear's Soviet surplus, lol.
Tehran, Iran, Apr. 08 Parts of Tehrans Lavizan Forrest, where one of Irans controversial suspect nuclear sites is situated, were set on fire on Friday by unidentified individuals, state media reported on Saturday.
Several unidentified individuals set fire to dried leaves and tree branches in the forest, east of Tehran, which were being collected by city officials, the state-run news agency Fars reported. The blaze quickly spread to cover a vast section of the forest.
"Nice work, Tyrone."
"Thanks Dave. Got any MREs?"
Fire-fighters battled the flames for some six hours before the situation was brought under control. There were no casualties, according to media reports.
A second fire broke out in the forest at 3 a.m. on Saturday which spread rapidly from burning woods that had not been put out entirely. Emergency teams were battling the blaze until after 7 a.m.
Lavizan-Shian is a military site in northwest Tehran. Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency became interested in the site after the opposition National Council of Resistance of Iran charged in May 2003 that Irans Revolutionary Guards were conducting clandestine nuclear activities there. Soon after, Iran razed buildings and removed topsoil from the site to eliminate traces of illegal activities there. In April 2004, the NCRI revealed that Iran had transferred work and equipment from the site to another nearby military site, which later became known as Lavizan II.
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/09/2006
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#2
didnt they hack a whole forest down not long ago near tehran cos it had 'dust' or some sht from thier nuclear meddling in it that woulda given the game away? Maybe i dreamt it but i coulda sworn it happened about a year ago. Maybe this was another 'cover up' job.
#7
"Iran's Revolutionary Guards have taken the extraordinary step of cutting down thousands of trees in Teheran to prevent United Nations inspectors from finding traces of enriched uranium from a top-secret nuclear plant. News of last month's cleansing operation comes as the International Atomic Energy Agency's 35-member board meets in Vienna today to decide whether Iran should be reported to the United Nations Security Council for failing to comply with its obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. According to western intelligence sources, more than 7,000 trees which may have contained incriminating nuclear traces have been lost in a popular parkland area in the city near the Lavizan atomic research centre." Here is the article. Trees seem to be disappearing fast in this area, one way or another.
Police have detained two army conscripts after they took at least two people hostage in a fast food outlet in protest at the treatment of soldiers in southeast Turkey. The gunmen, in their early 20s, were detained on the roof terrace of the Burger King restaurant in central Istanbul after one of them fired his pistol into the air, said a Reuters reporter at Taksim square, which had been surrounded by police. Celalettin Cerrah, Istanbul's chief of police, said the two men, who had gone without leave of absence from the army in Egirdir, had taken several people hostage but none had been harmed. Cerrah said: "They said they were carrying out this act to protest at the incidents in the southeast in recent days."
Clashes between the security forces and the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) have escalated in recent weeks. A rebel group linked to the PKK has also claimed responsibility for a series of bombings in recent days. A man, who gave his name only as Cengiz, said as he carved a kebab at one of the food restaurants on Taksim square: "It seems they were very upset by what has happened in the southeast. They shouted that nothing was being done to protect the martyred soldiers."
Dozens of police flanked the mini-van which took away the two men, wearing red and white T-shirts with the word "Turkey" on them, with locals booing them as they left.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/09/2006
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Brigitte Gabriel
I was invited to give a lecture sponsored by Professor David Patterson of the Judaic Studies Program. When news about my appearance spread, the Muslim community both on and off campus launched a full-scale campaign to stop my lecture. They demanded that Dr. Patterson cancel my speech. E-mails flooded the University of Memphis administration and Dr. Patterson from Muslim students on campus and Muslims in the community and mosques. Here are some of their comments:
People like Brigitte are plenty in the world, they are the true enemies of Islam. And despite their rubbish talks, the truth about Islam is spreading like a wildfire across Americas and across the globe (All Praise to Allah).
Dr. Patterson, hosting of this lady is orders of magnitude worse than hosting of the Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.
Do you honestly think the scheduled lecture will serve any useful purpose other than inflaming the Muslims, insulting them and spilling poison in the community?
#2
well, if the campus bigs don't cave like a bunch of cowering wussies, then think of it as good publicity for your talk. And if they do cave, work to get them fired.
Turkish forces have killed six Kurdish fighters near the Iraqi border, and have arrested a man they believe was behind a bomb attack last July. The Anatolian news agency quoted security officials as saying on Saturday that six Kurdish militants had been killed in a military operation near the Iraqi border against members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party, PKK. The helicopter-backed operation came amid an increase in bombings in Turkey and after the worst civil unrest in the mainly Kurdish southeast for more than 10 years.
Posted by: Fred ||
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Paris, Apr. 08 A Swiss judge has issued an international arrest warrant for the former head of Irans notorious secret police for his role in the assassination of a prominent Iranian dissident. The warrant was issued to law enforcement agencies for the arrest of Hojjatoleslam Ali Fallahian, who for years headed Irans Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS). Fallahian was charged with masterminding the assassination of Prof. Kazem Rajavi, a renowned human rights advocate and elder brother of Iranian opposition leader Massoud Rajavi.
Kazem Rajavi, then the representative of the opposition National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) in Switzerland, was gunned down in broad daylight by several MOIS agents on April 24, 1990 as he was driving to his home in Coppet, a village near Geneva.
A statement released by the NCRI on Saturday said that the warrant issued by Swiss Investigative Magistrate Jacques Antenen called on law enforcement agencies to arrest Ali Fallahian, former Minister of Intelligence and Security of the Islamic Republic of Iran and transfer him to the Canton Vaud Prison in Lausanne, Switzerland. The Swiss judges ruling added that prior to the assassination of Kazem Rajavi, Fallahian had also ordered the assassination of Massoud Rajavi.
No word on where these jokers are, or whether they can be arrested.
The NCRI charged that Irans Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and former President Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani were also directly involved in ordering the assassination and should be issued international arrest warrants as well. 13 persons were involved in planning and carrying out the murder. All of them had service passports, marked on assignment. A number of those documents had been issued on the same day in Tehran, Judge Antenen announced.
He added that the MOIS had close ties with Irans Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), particularly the Qods (Jerusalem) Force, and Minister Fallahian was responsible for assassinations and issuing the orders for all such missions.
Kazem Rajavi was Iran's first Ambassador to the United Nations headquarters in Geneva following the 1979 Islamic revolution. Shortly after his appointment, he resigned his post in protest to the repressive policies and terrorist activities of the ruling clerics in Iran. He then intensified his campaign against mass executions, arbitrary arrests, and torture carried out by Irans theocratic leadership. At the age of 56, he held six doctorate degrees in the fields of law, political science, and sociology from the universities of Paris and Geneva.
Two of the hitmen were later discovered in France and arrested by French police. Despite a warrant for their arrest by the authorities in Switzerland, the French government boarded them on a direct flight to Tehran. The French action drew international condemnation including from the United States Department of State.
Which was nothing new for them.
Fallahian, who is currently an advisor on security affairs to Supreme Leader Khamenei and a member of the Assembly of Experts, is believed to have plotted other high-profile terrorist strikes and assassination of Iranian dissidents elsewhere in Europe and the Middle East.
In 1997, a court in Berlin implicated Fallahian, Khamenei, Rafsanjani, and then-Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati in masterminding the 1992 killing of four Kurdish dissidents in a restaurant called the Mykonos.
Iranian exiles charge that the MOIS continues to have a heavy presence in Europe and has stepped up intelligence gathering operations against Iranian dissidents since hard-liner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took office as President.
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/09/2006
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A female NGO worker was found murdered at her house at Hazipara in the city yesterday.
Police recovered the body of Baby Begum, 30, a field worker of Care Bangladesh. Blindfolded, her body bore marks of injury with a piece of cloth inside the mouth and a scarf around the neck.
"Legume! Look carefully at the body. The burn marks around the neck, the cloth inside the mouth -- I believe she was strangled. And the blindfold means that she never saw it coming."
"Brilliant, inspector, brilliant!"
Police sent the body to Dhaka Medical College and Hospital morgue in the afternoon for autopsy.
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/09/2006
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#1
Baby Begum gottem Wacked, whats the world coming to.
Every night every day
In this house filled with shame
I can say I care
But there's no one there
There's no truth in my lies
There's no light in my eyes
And it's all I guess
That I'll ever miss
What's the world coming to
What's the world coming to
Everyone's gone to the moon
What's the world coming to
In a tale reminiscent of the last Wallace and Gromit movie, furious villagers in northeast England have hired armed guards to protect their beloved communal vegetable gardens from a suspected monster rabbit. Leeks, Japanese onions, parsnips and spring carrots have all been ripped up and devoured by the mystery were-rabbit -- prompting the 12 allotment holders in Felton, north of Newcastle, to hire two marksmen with air rifles and orders to shoot to kill. PETA protest 5..4..3..
"It is the most foul, cruel, and bad-tempered rodent you ever set eyes on! a massive thing. It's got a vicious streak a mile wide! It's a killer! is a monster. The first time I saw it, I said: 'What the hell is that?'" the Northumberland Gazette newspaper quoted local resident Jeff Smith, 63, as saying on its website. He claims to have seen the black and brown rabbit -- with one ear bigger than the other -- about two months ago, and at least three fellow allotment holders say they have seen it as well. "I have seen it and it is bigger than a normal rabbit. It's eating all our crops and we grow the best stuff here," said retired miner George Brown, 76, quoted by the domestic Press Association news agency.
"Aye! That's right! 'Tis the Loch Ness Bunny!"
Smith could not be reached for comment Friday, but his mother told AFP that the hare-raising story is true -- and no less an authority than the British Rabbit Council said it was credible. "I warned you, but did you listen to me? Oh, no, you knew it all, didn't you? Oh, it's just a harmless little bunny, isn't it?
Certain breeds do grow very big, like the Continental Giant" which can be 66 centimetres (26 inches) in length or more, a spokesman for the Nottinghamshire-based council, which represent rabbit breeders, told AFP.
#4
Eating a diet of leeks, Japanese onions, parsnips and spring carrots will surely turn him into a tasty flavoursome snack , im sure .. Might even take a potter up there and see if i can bag this elusive Wabbit for myself !! Yummy ..
Former prime minister Nawaz Sharif was not issued a visa by the US Embassy in London to travel to New York to attend a wedding and meet party members. Sharif was planning to attend the wedding of the daughter of a close family friend, Capt Shaheen Butt, this weekend. He applied for a visitors visa at the US Embassy in London four weeks ago. Although the American embassy knew that his principal purpose in travelling to New York was to attend the wedding, it did not oblige. While the embassy did not say that it was refusing a visa, for all practical purposes, that was what it did.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/09/2006
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A car bomb killed at least six Shia pilgrims south of Baghdad on Saturday, the latest in a wave of attacks that had prompted a fresh warning against civil war in Iraq. The blast near a Shia shrine in the town of Musayib also wounded 16 people, said police Captain Muthana al-Maamouri.
Just two hours earlier, powerful Shia leader Abdul Aziz al-Hakim had urged his followers to stand firm against what he called an Al Qaeda campaign to ignite sectarian civil war with bombings like one on Friday that killed at least 70 people. That triple suicide bombing at the Buratha mosque in Baghdad, the biggest single suicide attack on a Shia target since November 2005, raised fresh fears of a full-blown communal conflict, with the United States, Britain and UN quickly urging Iraqi unity.
Posted by: Fred ||
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IRAQ has announced the discovery of oil reserves in the mountainous Kurdish region of Zakho, close to its border with Turkey.
"We have discovered oil at Zakho, 470km north of Baghdad," announced Iraq's deputy oil minister Motassam Akram. He said the oil wells were drilled by a Norwegian company, DNO and added that the actual crude reserves would be known "soon".
In March, the Kurdish authorities had announced the signing of a contract with a Canadian company, Western Oil Sands, to survey the region of Garmain, 120km south of Sulaimaniyah. Most of Iraq's crude reserves are in Shiite-dominated southern regions and are exported through the two southern terminals. Exports from Iraq's northern fields around Kirkuk, just south of Kurdistan, have effectively been shut down by insurgent attacks.
The self-rule Kurdish region, which groups the provinces of Sulaimaniyah, Arbil and Dohuk, has a small number of oil fields.
In 2005, the country lost $US6.25 billion in oil revenues due to sustained insurgent attacks on its oil infrastructure.
Jordan should reopen immediately its border to Palestinian refugees fleeing from violence in Iraq, and the international community should aid in their resettlement in third countries acceptable to them, a leading US human rights group said Friday. The New York-based Human Rights Watch said that more than a hundred Palestinians have been stranded on the Iraqi side of the border with Jordan after fleeing lethal violence and threats to their lives in Baghdad. Jordan closed its border to all traffic after these Iraqi Palestinians crossed into no mans land on March 19 and attempted to reach Jordan, the organization said in a statement. Jordan argues that it is already hosting thousands of Palestinian and Iraqi refugees, and says that it is unable to cope with more, it said.
Posted by: Fred ||
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#1
Yeah, like that'll happen.
I think the King there likes living too much.
Why don't the "human rights" clowns take them in? Put your money where your mouths are, assholes.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
04/09/2006 0:14
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#2
settle them in Saoodi then
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/09/2006 0:15
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How about opening its borders to the West Bank Paleos?
The Bajaur Agency political administration on Saturday launched an operation against poppy growers after a jirga failed to resolve matters. Sources said that Barang tribes had refused to cooperate with the government in destroying the poppy crop voluntarily. Reports reaching Khar, the regional headquarters of Bajaur Agency, said that a levy force supported by tribal police and tribesmen in Barang tehsil, the hub of poppy cultivation, were exchanging fire. According to eyewitnesses, both sides were using heavy weapons. However, there have been no reports of casualties on either side. The atmosphere was tense and villagers were fleeing to safer places.
Meanwhile, Haroon Rashid, member of the National Assembly from Bajaur, demanded immediate halt to the operation, saying the government was deliberately disturbing the peaceful atmosphere in the area. A senior administration official said the operation would continue until tribesmen agreed to destroy the standing poppy crop.
Posted by: Fred ||
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#1
In other economic news, Dell refused to stop making computers, California farmers refused to stop producing wine, and Apple continues to produce the Ipod. General Motors, however, is considering leaving the auto industry.
#2
gotta offer them an alternative economy - no easy answers, but they need to eat/feed the families, and if poppies did it for generations, how ya gonna tell them to stop without an alternative?
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/09/2006 14:37
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#3
I'll bet I could run a world class Blog if I had access to all the pulp magazines that Fred does.
PESHAWAR: The Islami Jumaat-e-Talba (IJT) activists held a protest demonstration against the administration of Peshawar University at the press club on Saturday for banning Quran teaching classes in the campus.
The protestors chanted slogans against university administration and said no ban on Quran-teaching classes would be tolerated. IJT General Secretary Samiullah Shehbaz alleged that campus police tear-gassed and baton charged them at the department of Pharmacy, as they were going for their Quran teaching class. He claimed that the police also arrested some of their colleagues. He demanded the NWFP Governor Khalil-ur-Rehman and Chief Minister Akram Khan Durani to take action against vice chancellor and administration of the varsity and release their arrested activists.
Posted by: Fred ||
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THE Federal Government is considering a national criminal identity database as a weapon against terrorism. Under the proposal, existing police data bases would be integrated and cross-referenced so potential terrorist activities in one area would lead to alerts in other areas. The proposal is being pushed by Liberal backbencher Jason Wood, a former member of the Victorian police counter-terrorism unit, and Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for the Environment, Greg Hunt. The two have written to Attorney-General Philip Ruddock outlining a detailed plan. A spokeswoman for Mr Ruddock said the Attorney-General was "cautiously supportive".
In the letter, obtained by The Sunday Mail, Mr Wood and Mr Hunt recommend that the ID database be structured around the existing national money-laundering watch, CrimTrac. The letter says: "In further support of the Prime Minister's recently announced terrorism measures we would like to propose that the CrimTrac data base be extended to include holders of the new aviation and maritime identification cards, ammonium nitrate fertiliser licence holders, high-consequence dangerous goods licences and licence-holders for explosives including underwater explosives techniques courses."
Indian schoolgirl Julita Oraon, a devout Christian, never misses Sunday mass, but the rest of her week is spent studying Arabic and Sufi literature among other subjects at an Islamic religious school, or madrasa.
Oraon is one of tens of thousands of Hindu and Christian students in the state of West Bengal now attending such schools, considered breeding grounds for religious intolerance and even terrorism in much of Asia.
In this part of India, madrasas are emerging as beacons of tolerance. While a predominantly Hindu state, a quarter of West Bengal's population of 80 million are Muslims and one per cent are Christians.
Thousands died in communal violence before and after the partition of the subcontinent in 1947. There was more violence in the 1960s and 1970s after the arrival of hundreds of thousands of Bengali-speaking Muslims and Hindus from what was then East Pakistan and became Bangladesh.
But there have been no major communal clashes for decades in the state, which has been ruled by communists for most of independent India's history, and who have gained at the polls from policies designed to boost Muslim employment.
They have been handsomely rewarded with Muslims overwhelmingly supporting the left at the ballot box.
Community policing and street plays stressing religious harmony play their part as the state's leaders constantly push a message of tolerance.
But in the wake of the violence in the 1960s and 70s, officials also moved to reform the state's schools and especially its madrasas.
In 1977, they started reviewing the Islamic schools, introducing history and social science to the staple of Koranic study.
And after 2002, on the recommendation of a specially appointed committee, students had to study science, geography and computing. There are plans for foreign languages soon.
The changes have been credited with bringing about a change in the social outlook of the state's various faiths, and have attracted both teachers and students from other religions to the madrasas. School boards have recruited non-Muslims in a bid to find the best tutors for their students.
Now about 25 per cent of the 400,000 students who attend madrasas, and 15 per cent of their 10,000 teachers, are non-Muslims, officials say.
"In the 1970s, the mistrust grew and Muslims were thought to be friends of Pakistan and mostly spies," says Ahmed Hasan Imran, the general secretary of the Muslim Council of Bengal. "But that perception gradually changed with the reforms in the madrasas as well as other education institutes."
Swapan Pramanik, a leading sociologist and vice-chancellor of Vidya Sagar University in Kolkata, agrees that the reforms have helped bridge the divide.
"The conservative outlook of the Muslims as well as Hindus have changed," he says. "The changes have rubbed off on parents and whole communities, who have been able to spread the message of harmony."
The reforms have saved lives, experts say.
After a Hindu mob destroyed a mosque in the northern holy city of Ayodhya in 1992 much of India was wracked by deadly communal riots. But in Bengal students from madrasas, both Muslims and Hindus, led processions denouncing the demolition, Imran says.
In the aftermath of the Gujarat anti-Muslim riots a decade later, Bengal's Hindus, Christians and Muslims were quick to meet to ensure passions were cooled. The state government offered riot victims the chance to come and settle in West Bengal.
"People find it difficult to believe, but our madrasas ... are reflecting modern aspirations and expectations of the community irrespective of religion," Kanti Biswas, the state's education minister, told Reuters.
"We had carefully planned the madrasa reforms to make young minds understand the values of religious tolerance and it is finally paying off."
In Jalpaiguri district, about 500 km (300 miles) north of the state capital, Kolkata, 14-year-old Julita is posting higher marks in Arabic tests than her Muslim classmates at the Badaitari Ujiria Madrasa.
"I like the subject very much and that fact that I am a Christian has never been a problem with my Muslim friends."
Tapas Layek, the Hindu headmaster of a madrasa in south Kolkata has several co-religionists as colleagues. "We are loved and respected by our Muslim students who are also friendly with their Hindu classmates," he said.
Bengali Muslim scholars say that the view that madrasas are simply Islamic finishing schools is a corruption of their traditional role.
"Our madrasas are the perfect examples of what such institutes should really be," said Dr. Mohammed Sahidullah at Calcutta University.
Renowned Bengali filmmaker Mrinal Sen, a former jury member at the Cannes festival, said the state's experiment should be copied across the country.
"I can't help but be amazed at the way some of these religious schools are working towards communal harmony," he said.
Officials from other states -- including Maharashtra and Rajasthan -- have come to West Bengal to see the impact of the changes for themselves, said education minister Biswas.
"The perception of the respective communities about different culture and religion has helped residents of West Bengal to bridge the gulf of mistrust and come together," said sociologist Pramanik. "This has been a significant development in madrasas for the entire world to see."
Posted by: john ||
04/09/2006
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Pakistan is ready to discuss freezing the production of nuclear weapons in South Asia, Tasneem Aslam, the Foreign Office spokesperson, said on Saturday. Aslam was commenting on the US suggestion that South Asia freeze all nuclear weapon production. She said, however, that any such move should be done in consultation with Pakistan. Aslam said that Pakistan did not want to enter into a regional arms race, adding that it had been proposing a strategic restraint regime with India. She said that talks could be still held with India on a restraint regime. She said Pakistan had apprehensions on the India-US nuclear deal because it would affect regional stability.
Posted by: Fred ||
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#1
Translation.
(a) The heathen Hindoos have more of them than us righteous Muslims.
(b) They, being a decadent Democracy, will keep any agreements reached---thus, giving us time to caught up.
Syria marked the 59th anniversary of the founding of the Arab nationalist Baath party which rules the country, against a backdrop of growing US pressure for Damascus to change its policies. To celebrate the occasion, military barracks and buildings were decorated with Syrian flags, banners and portraits of President Bashar al-Assad. Syrian television broadcast an entire day of patriotic songs and documentaries about the history of the Baath party and the country's armed forces.
The Baath party, inaugurated officially in 1947 in Damascus, preaches Arab unity. It seized power in Iraq on February 8, 1963 in a coup d'etat. One month later, another coup saw it installed in Syria. The Baath, which means "resurrection" in Arabic, promotes pan-Arab nationalism and socialism.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/09/2006
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what's the proper gift for 59th anniversary? Rope necktie?
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/09/2006 0:28
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Now in their 60th year, let's shower them with the fire and hardness of diamond. And no flowers when they're gone, either. There is no flower associated with the 60th anniversary. Apparently anything white will do. How appropriate. Lillies are fine.
A suicide attacker detonated a car bomb outside a compound for NATO-led troops in western Afghanistan on Saturday, killing two Afghans, officials said. Insurgents loyal to the Taliban government toppled four years ago claimed the explosion 10 metres from the gates of the Italian-led provincial reconstruction team (PRT) in the relatively calm city of Heart. The powerful blast, which was heard throughout the city, sent shards of glass flying, shattered windows of nearby houses and cracked walls, witnesses said. It left a crater in the road, which was smeared with congealed blood.
A police guard at the gate and a civilian passerby were killed, NATOs International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said. Seven other Afghan civilians were wounded, one of them seriously, and an Italian national working for a government project was lightly hurt by flying glass, Captain Giorgio Buonaiuto said in the capital Kabul.
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FEDERAL police have confirmed they are aware of a Syrian-born refugee living in Sydney who is allegedly linked to the terrorism operations of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden. The Weekend Australian newspaper yesterday reported that Ahmad al-Hamwi had been accused of being a senior al-Qaida financier for 1993 World Trade Centre bomber, Ramzi Yousef. Mr al-Hamwi, who is also said to use the alias Abu Omar, has been living in Sydney since being granted asylum in June 1996, the newspaper said.
He is said to be related to bin Laden by marriage and allegedly was a confidant of some of the terror kingpin's closest lieutenants. An Australian Federal Police spokesman said they were aware of Mr al-Hamwi, but declined to elaborate further. Attorney-General Philip Ruddock also would not comment.
#1
FEDERAL police have confirmed they are now aware of a Syrian-born refugee living in Sydney who is allegedly linked to the terrorism operations of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.
Last to get the word though, the cleaning lady told 'em after she heard about it at the hair dresser..
HOW do you slip legislative poison past a U.S. senator? Bury it on page 302 of a bill. The Senate's Democratic and Republican leaders yesterday announced a compromise on an immigration bill - with some details still to be worked out. But details that may continue from the bill passed out of the Judiciary Committee should definitely be deal-breakers.
Like that surprise hidden on page 302 - which would replace the country's entire bench of experienced immigration judges with pro-immigration advocates.
With a few exceptions, today's immigration judges (who serve for life) are dedicated to enforcing the law, and they do a difficult job well. This bill forces all immigration judges to step down after serving seven years - and restricts replacements to attorneys with at least five years' experience practicing immigration law.
Virtually the only lawyers who'll meet that requirement are attorneys who represent aliens in the immigration courts - who tend to be some of the nation's most liberal lawyers, and who are certainly unlikely as a class to be fond of enforcing immigration laws.
It gets worse. Immigration judges are now appointed by the attorney general - whose job it is to see to it that laws are enforced. The Senate bill gives that power to a separate bureaucrat, albeit one directly appointed by the president, making immigration courts more susceptible to leftward polarization.
The second nasty surprise? Just before the committee approved the bill on the evening of March 27, Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) offered the "DREAM Act" as an amendment. It passed on a voice vote. The DREAM Act is a nightmare. It repeals a 1996 law that prohibits state universities from offering in-state tuition rates to illegal aliens. The principle, of course, is that no illegal alien should be entitled to receive a taxpayer-subsidized benefit that out-of-state U.S. citizens can't get. But the committee's bill allows illegals to be treated better than those U.S. citizens on tuition.
The bill also gives an amnesty to the nine states (including New York) that have been flouting the '96 law, two of which (California and Kansas) are now facing lawsuits (I'm a counsel to the plaintiffs in both cases).
The third nasty surprise lies in what the bill fails to do. The measure envisions a massive amnesty for illegal aliens now in the country - but doesn't give the Citizenship and Immigration Service (CIS) the personnel or infrastructure to implement the amnesty.
In March, the General Accounting Office (GAO) issued a scathing report on the CIS's inability to effectively detect immigration fraud. The last time we enacted a major amnesty, in 1986, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (the CIS's predecessor agency) processed some 3 million amnesty applications from illegal aliens. It found 398,000 cases of fraud - and missed thousands more. Now CIS may have to implement an amnesty four times larger.
Yet CIS already faces a backlog of several million applications for immigration benefits. And the GAO found that CIS managers pressure staff into "meeting production goals" by approving applications quickly - which means that fraud goes undetected. Adding millions of amnesty applications can only make things worse. And the latest Senate "compromise" - giving immediate amnesty only to aliens who've been in the country for five years or more - makes the process even more complex and fraud-prone, as illegals use fake documents to "prove" long-term residence.
In 1986, the terrorist Mahmud "The Red" Abouhalima fraudulently got amnesty as a seasonal agricultural worker (in fact, he was a New York cabbie). That status allowed him to travel to Afghanistan for terrorist training - which he later used as one of the 1993 World Trade Center bombers.
Terrorists know how to game the system. Janice Kephart, former counsel to the 9/11 Commission, released a study last year on how easily terrorists obtain immigration benefits. Of 94 alien terrorists in the United States, she found that 59 were successful immigration frauds. That includes six of the 9/11 hijackers.
The Senate bill does nothing to address this problem - while throwing a massive new load on the bureaucracy. A new amnesty will almost certainly ensure that more terrorists gain the legal right to walk our streets.
They will no doubt show their appreciation by attacking innocent Americans. And that will be the nastiest surprise of all.
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/09/2006
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Xenophobic paranoia. Where's the popcorn graphic?
Posted by: Black Sunday ||
04/09/2006 0:48
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Yup, I'm xenophobic against commies. I think it's a good thing they're not allowed in or able to sit on the bench.
I'm about to plan a little trip with my family and extended family, and I would like to ask you to assist me. I'm going to walk across the border from the U.S. into Mexico, and I need to make a few arrangements. I know you can help with this.
I plan to skip all the legal stuff like visas, passports, immigration quotas and laws. I'm sure they handle those things the same way you do here.
So, would you mind telling your buddy, President Vicente Fox, that I'm on my way over? Please let him know that I will be expecting the following:
1. Free medical care for my entire family.
2. English-speaking government bureaucrats for all services I might need, whether I use them or not.
3. All government forms need to be printed in English.
4. I want my kids to be taught by English-speaking teachers.
5. Schools need to include classes on American culture and history.
6. I want my kids to see the American flag flying on the top of the flag pole at their school with the Mexican flag flying lower down.
7. Please plan to feed my kids at school for both breakfast and lunch.
8. I will need a local Mexican driver's license so I can get easy access to government services.
9. I do not plan to have any car insurance, and I won't make any effort to learn local traffic laws.
10. In case one of the Mexican police officers does not get the memo from Pres. Fox to leave me alone, please be sure that all police officers speak English.
11. I plan to fly the U.S. flag from my house top, put flag decals on my car, and have a gigadntic celebration on July 4th. I do not want any complaints or negative comments from the locals.
12. I would also like to have a nice job without paying any taxes, and don't enforce any labor laws or tax laws.
13. Please tell all the people in the country to be extremely nice and never say a critical word about me, or about the strain I might place on the economy.
I know this is an easy request because you already do all these things for all the people who come to the U.S. from Mexico. I am sure that
Pres. Fox won't mind returning the favor if you ask him nicely. However, if he gives you any trouble, just invite him to go quail
hunting with your V.P.
Arrested, tortured, held by the US in Guantanamo Bay for three years without charge and then suddenly released - Mamdouh Habib has been back in Australia for a year. But his homecoming hasn't been smooth. Since returning home he's been stabbed, threatened, and last week arrested and thrown in a paddy wagon after he rang the police to report witnessing a shooting.
MINSK: Belaruss President Alexander Lukashenko, his re-election contested in the West, took the oath of office on Saturday for a new term and told critics to stop trying to impose a coloured malaise in his ex-Soviet state. With his right hand on the Belarussian constitution, Lukashenko looked resolute, if a bit pale, in vowing to serve the Belarussian people and uphold their rights during a ceremony in the imposing Palace of Republic in central Minsk. In a short, emotional speech after taking the oath, the 51-year-old leader vowed to maintain the policies which have drawn such stinging criticism from the European Union and United States. And he launched a fierce new attack on both Belaruss liberal opposition and the West, saying that his state of 10 million had rejected the coloured revolutions that helped sweep leaders from power in ex-Soviet Georgia and Ukraine.
Posted by: Fred ||
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Four people have been killed and 14 wounded - including eight primary school students - after a warehouse exploded in southern Yemen, security officials say. Investigations are under way to determine the cause of Saturday's explosion in the warehouse in Muderiyat al-Sawadiyah, a town in al-Baydaa province, about 220km southwest of the capital, Sanaa. The building, owned by a weapons merchant, was in a residential area in the middle of the town, near Tariq Bin Ziyad elementary school.
That's a logical place to put it...
It was not known if any ammunition was in the warehouse. A security official said the owner did not have permission to store any.
So it was prob'ly a gas main or an asteroid or something...
Three homes were flattened in the early evening blast, the security official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
A big asteroid, then...
He said eight of the wounded were seriously hurt.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/09/2006
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Work accident! :-D
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
04/09/2006 0:11
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The building, owned by a weapons merchant, was in a residential area in the middle of the town, near Tariq Bin Ziyad elementary school
should be a short trial and hanging....but it won't happen
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/09/2006 0:13
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A group of about 40 rebel tribesmen downed arms and surrendered Saturday to authorities in Balochistan, officials said. A total of 40 Bugti tribesmen including five of their commanders have surrendered with weapons and explosives in Sui, DCO Abdus Samad Lasi told AFP. They surrendered unconditionally. The government is considering offering amnesty to Bugti fighters who were not wanted for laying landmines and attacks on security forces, Lasi said. Bugtis spokesman Agha Shahid denied the allegations, and said the 40 men were robbers and had no links with the tribal elder.
Posted by: Fred ||
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There are no foreigners in North Waziristan Agency and if the government has proof that there are it should release it in the media, according to Maulana Naik Zaman, member of the National Assembly from North Waziristan. Many local tribesmen have been killed under the guise of military operations against foreign militants, Zaman said in an interview with the BBC. Locals used to cooperate with the military, but there is now increasing hatred of the army among the local population because of the killing of innocent civilians, he added. Bazaars and residences have been razed and tribesmen who had been protecting the border with Afghanistan for the last 55 years are being killed, he said.
And doing one hell of a job of it, we might add...
Posted by: Fred ||
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Five inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency arrived in Tehran on Saturday to visit the countrys uranium enrichment and reprocessing facilities, Tehrans state-run television reported. Irans deputy nuclear chief, Mohammad Saeedi, confirmed that the inspectors would immediately visit the Natanz uranium enrichment plant and the Isfahan Uranium Conversion Facility, both in central Iran.
The inspectors, who landed in Iran on Friday, were scheduled to remain in the country for five days. Saeedi described the inspectors visit as a prescheduled trip within the framework of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. IAEA chief, Mohamed ElBaradei, who is due to visit Iran next week to try and wrest concessions from Tehran on its atomic programme, could arrive in the country as early as Sunday or Monday, Irans official Islamic Republic News Agency reported. While ElBaradeis trip is meant to defuse tensions caused by fears Iran could be seeking nuclear weapons, a partial success could actually exacerbate differences among the five permanent members of the Security Council. If Iran commits to some Security Council requests, but does not meet demands to freeze uranium enrichment, that might placate Russia and China, which oppose tough measures against Iran. It would, however, fall short of the full compliance sought by the United States, France and Britain on enrichment and other issues.
Posted by: Fred ||
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The United Nations (UN) should be made more effective to eradicate poverty and sustain development and humanitarian programmes, Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz told the second meeting of a UN panel on reforms on Saturday. Aziz said that developing countries should be considered when the UN provides assistance to various countries for development projects. He told the meeting that the UN panel would complete its suggestions by August so that they could be tabled in the UN General Assemblys meeting in September. UN Secretary General Kofi Anan also addressed the meeting.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/09/2006
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"The UN should be made more effective"
By disbanding?
I'll help 'em pack. :-D
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
04/09/2006 0:18
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North Koreas defence minister warned Saturday that a pre-emptive strike is not the monopoly of the United States, in comments carried by the Norths official news agency. We will never sit with arms folded and watch until the US attacks us, said Kim Il Chol, vice marshal of the Norths Korean Peoples Army, according to the official Korean Central News Agency. A pre-emptive strike is not the monopoly of the US, he said.
The warning, which is not new, came as North Koreas top nuclear envoy was in Japan for a security conference that also is drawing his counterparts from the US and other participants in six-nation talks on the Norths nuclear programme.
Posted by: Fred ||
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slamming the spoon on the highchair for attention again?
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/09/2006 0:16
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Kimmie-boy is just pinning for another visit from Halfbright thats all.
Life in Zimbabwe is shorter than anywhere else in the world, with neither men nor women expected to live to 40, World Health Organisation statistics showed on Friday.
I think the central problem here is that Bob is expected to live until two or three weeks after Doomsday.
The WHOs World Health Report for 2006 said the average life expectancy in the AIDS and poverty-stricken country was 36 years - less than half of the 82-year life span in Japan, which lies at the top of the table with San Marino and Monaco. The report used the latest data from 2004. Last years report, based on 2003, put Zimbabwes average life expectancy one year higher at 37. Women in Zimbabwe were the worst-off in the world, living an average 34 years, down from 36, the WHO data showed. Male life expectancy was 37 years, unchanged from 2003.
So, how's that socialism thing working out for you, Bob?
Posted by: Fred ||
04/09/2006
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Well, for Bob, it's just dandy. For the rest of Rhodesia, it sux.
#3
I suspect that drastically shortening the life expectancy of one Bob would greatly lengthen the life expectancy of lots of other people there.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
04/09/2006 0:22
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The real story, which is course is taboo in our PC times is that black African life expectancy under the 'racist white regime' of Ian Smith was double what it was today.
A truthful headline would be - Political Correctness Kills Millions in Zimbabwe.
#7
Well, I think that we can all live with a clear conscience in the knowledge that no one thinks that it is possible to improve on this state of affairs.
For a man who almost never speaks in court, al-Qaida conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui has managed to convey many emotions particularly the day testimony and photos about 9/11 terror victims overcame many in the room. Moussaoui smiled at descriptions of his lack of remorse, sang and taunted Americans as he left court, and affected a lack of interest in video of bodies falling from the World Trade Center towers. But he appeared as transfixed as the rest of the courtroom when former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani described a young girl whose firefighter father died a hero on Sept. 11, 2001, months before her birth.
When the second phase of his sentencing trial opened Thursday, the bearded 37-year-old Frenchman of Moroccan descent seemed almost cocky particularly for a man facing a jury that will decide whether he is executed or imprisoned for life. He smiled when prosecutor Rob Spencer reminded jurors that he has displayed no remorse and testified that he was "grateful" to be included in al-Qaida's 9/11 conspiracy. When prosecutors began showing videos of the hijacked jets hitting the gleaming towers of the World Trade Center, Moussaoui smiled. As more angles were shown, he stopped watching and took a few notes. When prosecutors showed video of people who were trapped on the upper floors and jumped more than 80 stories to their deaths, Moussaoui affected an air of boredom, swaying his head from side to side and rolling his eyes.
Garbed in a green prison jumpsuit and white knit cap, Moussaoui sits alone at a small table by the wall opposite the jury apart from the court-appointed defense lawyers he despises. U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema has made clear that outbursts like those for which he became famous during four years of pretrial maneuvering will get him banished to a jail cell with a closed-circuit TV view of the trial. So he has behaved when the court is in session.
But when there is a recess, the marshals keep him in place until the judge and jury have left. Invariably during his three strides to the door on leaving, Moussaoui has offered a clipped commentary on events. At first they were muttered, then spoken aloud, later shouted. Midday Thursday after the crash videos, he left singing "Burn in the U.S.A." to the tune of "Born in the U.S.A.," by Bruce Springsteen, one of his favorite singers as a teenager growing up in France.
But the emotion-laden testimony about victims changed even Moussaoui's mood. Near the end of two hours of testimony, Giuliani's voice began to quake and break as he discussed his longtime aide, Beth Petrone Hatton, and her firefighter husband, Terence Hatton, a genuine hero of the New York Fire Department who led one of its elite rescue units and had earned 19 medals in 21 years. Giuliani described the "great joy and sadness" he felt when Beth Hatton telephoned him five to 10 days after Terence was killed rescuing people from the trade center with word that she was pregnant. A photo of Giuliani with the Hattons' daughter, Terry, born May 15, 2002, was shown as he testified: "Terry's going to grow up without a father ... without a very special father." Like everyone else in the courtroom, Moussaoui couldn't take his eyes off Giuliani.
He was equally attentive the rest of the afternoon as witnesses described other children who lost parents on 9/ll. His expression conveyed interest, but hid any other emotions he might have felt. Leaving court at day's end, he said, "No pain, no gain, America."
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The Super Mario Brothers Tamil Tigers have been added to Canada's list of outlawed terrorist organizations, the National Post has learned. The designation was to be finalized yesterday, a day after Cabinet met to accept a recommendation from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. An official announcement was scheduled for Monday. The Brothers Tigers are the 39th terrorist group to be outlawed under the Anti-Terrorism Act, and the first added to the list by the new Conservative government.
Posted by: john ||
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AN ISRAELI missile strike killed six Palestinian militants at a training camp in Gaza, medics said, hours after two Palestinian gunmen died in a similar raid that Israel said was aimed at rocket launchers. The Israeli military confirmed it had targeted a camp used by militants affiliated with President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah group. Palestinian witnesses said the Abu el-Reesh Brigades, an armed wing of Fatah, had used the camp to train their militants.
Medics said the strike killed six people. Witnesses saw three bodies being brought to a hospital morgue, while two more Palestinians were treated for injuries sustained in the blast. Earlier in the day, an Israeli air strike killed two gunmen of al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, also part of Fatah. Israel has in recent weeks pounded Gaza with missile strikes and artillery shelling against what it says are militants involved in rocket attacks against the Jewish state, which have increased in recent weeks.
#2
Israel has in recent weeks pounded Gaza with missile strikes and artillery shelling against what it says are militants involved in rocket attacks against the Jewish state, which ____ have increased in recent weeks.
The Australian Federal Police has suspended an officer after he consulted a clairvoyant about a death threat made to the Prime Minister.
They knew this would happen, of course...
The officer disclosed classified information and details of the death threat to a small-town psychic he knew socially, breaching the AFP code of conduct regarding confidentiality and national security, The Sunday Age newspaper reported. "I can confirm we are currently investigating the matter. A member of the AFP has been suspended," an AFP spokesman told the newspaper. "The AFP takes seriously all allegations of misconduct by officers, and does not condone the use of psychics in security matters."
The Sunday Age named Elizabeth Walker, a Scottish-born medium based in the NSW Snowy Mountains town of Cooma, as the clairvoyant. She told the newspaper she could not comment but added: "I don't divulge any of the stuff I do. I've done lots of people. I've done political people, famous people, but I don't talk about who's been in. I don't even discuss it with my husband."
AFP senior staff were alerted to the security breach in December. The officer was not part of John Howard's personal AFP security detail but knew about the death threat and that it was being treated seriously. Knowing some investigations had hit a wall, the officer took matters into his own hands and turned to Mrs Walker. A spokesman for Mr Howard said: "We don't run the AFP and, if there is a matter regarding discipline or an individual officer, it really is something for them to deal with."
"All we need is an after-action report in triplicate and his scalp."
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.
North Korea has said it won't return to six-way talks on its nuclear weapons programme unless the United States lifts its sanctions on North Korean companies. "Is there anything to do if the United States does not change its position?" said Song Il Hyuck, a member of the North Korean delegation at a security conference in Tokyo.
CARACAS, Venezuela - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said the U.S. ambassador was "provoking the Venezuelan people" and threatened Sunday to expel the American diplomat, whose convoy was chased by pro-government protesters. 
Tehran, Iran, Apr. 09 Iran said on Sunday that it shot down an unmanned spy plane from Iraq in the south of the country. This plane had lifted off from Iraq and was busy filming the border regions, the semi-official daily Jomhouri Islami wrote.
More than 50 Muslims who have returned to Germany from fighting in Iraq are under observation by German authorities two months ahead of the football World Cup, Focus news magazine reported. 
Spains Supreme Court on Friday threw out the convictions of three men found guilty last year of being part of an al-Qaida-linked group after prosecutors agreed there was not sufficient evidence to jail them, a court official said.
THE festering refugee camp of Khan Yunis, where the stench of sewage hangs over potholed dirt roads and concrete blockhouses crowded with 270,000 Palestinians, has long been fertile soil for radical groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Now there are growing indications it is also becoming a breeding ground for Al-Qaeda.
JEDDAH Saudi journalist Rabah Al-Quwayi, 24, has been detained by Hail authorities in connection with his writings posted on Internet forums, which they allege place his Islamic faith in doubt.
UNITED NATIONS (AP) - U.N. Security Council members agree the war crimes trial of former Liberian President Charles Taylor should be moved from Sierra Leone to the Netherlands and could adopt a resolution next week to allow the transfer, the council president said.
Tehran, Iran, Apr. 07 Iranian police held up a 10-year-old girl in Tehrans Mehrabad Airport for mal-veiling, state-run Persian-language websites reported on Friday.
BEIRUT: 
Tehran, Iran, Apr. 07 Irans State Security Forces (SSF) tied a young man to a wall in Tehran on charges of causing trouble, the government-run news agency Fars reported on Friday.
Tehran, Iran, Apr. 08 Parts of Tehrans Lavizan Forrest, where one of Irans controversial suspect nuclear sites is situated, were set on fire on Friday by unidentified individuals, state media reported on Saturday.
Police have detained two army conscripts after they took at least two people hostage in a fast food outlet in protest at the treatment of soldiers in southeast Turkey. The gunmen, in their early 20s, were detained on the roof terrace of the Burger King restaurant in central Istanbul after one of them fired his pistol into the air, said a Reuters reporter at Taksim square, which had been surrounded by police. Celalettin Cerrah, Istanbul's chief of police, said the two men, who had gone without leave of absence from the army in Egirdir, had taken several people hostage but none had been harmed. Cerrah said: "They said they were carrying out this act to protest at the incidents in the southeast in recent days."
Turkish forces have killed six Kurdish fighters near the Iraqi border, and have arrested a man they believe was behind a bomb attack last July. The Anatolian news agency quoted security officials as saying on Saturday that six Kurdish militants had been killed in a military operation near the Iraqi border against members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party, PKK. The helicopter-backed operation came amid an increase in bombings in Turkey and after the worst civil unrest in the mainly Kurdish southeast for more than 10 years.
A female NGO worker was found murdered at her house at Hazipara in the city yesterday. 
In a tale reminiscent of the last Wallace and Gromit movie, furious villagers in northeast England have hired armed guards to protect their beloved communal vegetable gardens from a suspected monster rabbit. Leeks, Japanese onions, parsnips and spring carrots have all been ripped up and devoured by the mystery were-rabbit -- prompting the 12 allotment holders in Felton, north of Newcastle, to hire two marksmen with air rifles and orders to shoot to kill. 
Former prime minister Nawaz Sharif was not issued a visa by the US Embassy in London to travel to New York to attend a wedding and meet party members. Sharif was planning to attend the wedding of the daughter of a close family friend, Capt Shaheen Butt, this weekend. He applied for a visitors visa at the US Embassy in London four weeks ago. Although the American embassy knew that his principal purpose in travelling to New York was to attend the wedding, it did not oblige. While the embassy did not say that it was refusing a visa, for all practical purposes, that was what it did.
A car bomb killed at least six Shia pilgrims south of Baghdad on Saturday, the latest in a wave of attacks that had prompted a fresh warning against civil war in Iraq. The blast near a Shia shrine in the town of Musayib also wounded 16 people, said police Captain Muthana al-Maamouri. 
IRAQ has announced the discovery of oil reserves in the mountainous Kurdish region of Zakho, close to its border with Turkey.
Jordan should reopen immediately its border to Palestinian refugees fleeing from violence in Iraq, and the international community should aid in their resettlement in third countries acceptable to them, a leading US human rights group said Friday. The New York-based Human Rights Watch said that more than a hundred Palestinians have been stranded on the Iraqi side of the border with Jordan after fleeing lethal violence and threats to their lives in Baghdad. Jordan closed its border to all traffic after these Iraqi Palestinians crossed into no mans land on March 19 and attempted to reach Jordan, the organization said in a statement. Jordan argues that it is already hosting thousands of Palestinian and Iraqi refugees, and says that it is unable to cope with more, it said.
The 
PESHAWAR: The Islami Jumaat-e-Talba (IJT) activists held a protest demonstration against the administration of Peshawar University at the press club on Saturday for banning Quran teaching classes in the campus.
THE Federal Government is considering a national criminal identity database as a weapon against terrorism. Under the proposal, existing police data bases would be integrated and cross-referenced so potential terrorist activities in one area would lead to alerts in other areas. The proposal is being pushed by Liberal backbencher Jason Wood, a former member of the Victorian police counter-terrorism unit, and Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for the Environment, Greg Hunt. The two have written to Attorney-General Philip Ruddock outlining a detailed plan. A spokeswoman for Mr Ruddock said the Attorney-General was "cautiously supportive". 
Pakistan is ready to discuss freezing the production of nuclear weapons in South Asia, 
Syria marked the 59th anniversary of the founding of the Arab nationalist Baath party which rules the country, against a backdrop of growing US pressure for Damascus to change its policies. To celebrate the occasion, military barracks and buildings were decorated with Syrian flags, banners and portraits of President Bashar al-Assad. Syrian television broadcast an entire day of patriotic songs and documentaries about the history of the Baath party and the country's armed forces.
A suicide attacker detonated a car bomb outside a compound for NATO-led troops in western Afghanistan on Saturday, killing two Afghans, officials said. Insurgents loyal to the Taliban government toppled four years ago claimed the explosion 10 metres from the gates of the Italian-led provincial reconstruction team (PRT) in the relatively calm city of Heart. The powerful blast, which was heard throughout the city, sent shards of glass flying, shattered windows of nearby houses and cracked walls, witnesses said. It left a crater in the road, which was smeared with congealed blood. 
FEDERAL police have confirmed they are aware of a Syrian-born refugee living in Sydney who is allegedly linked to the terrorism operations of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden. The Weekend Australian newspaper yesterday reported that Ahmad al-Hamwi had been accused of being a senior al-Qaida financier for 1993 World Trade Centre bomber, Ramzi Yousef. Mr al-Hamwi, who is also said to use the alias Abu Omar, has been living in Sydney since being granted asylum in June 1996, the newspaper said. 
HOW do you slip legislative poison past a U.S. senator? Bury it on page 302 of a bill. The Senate's Democratic and Republican leaders yesterday announced a compromise on an immigration bill - with some details still to be worked out. But details that may continue from the bill passed out of the Judiciary Committee should definitely be deal-breakers.
Arrested, tortured, held by the US in Guantanamo Bay for three years without charge and then suddenly released - Mamdouh Habib has been back in Australia for a year. But his homecoming hasn't been smooth. Since returning home he's been stabbed, threatened, and last week arrested and thrown in a paddy wagon after he rang the police to report witnessing a shooting.
MINSK: Belaruss President Alexander Lukashenko, his re-election contested in the West, took the oath of office on Saturday for a new term and told critics to stop trying to impose a coloured malaise in his ex-Soviet state. With his right hand on the Belarussian constitution, Lukashenko looked resolute, if a bit pale, in vowing to serve the Belarussian people and uphold their rights during a ceremony in the imposing Palace of Republic in central Minsk. In a short, emotional speech after taking the oath, the 51-year-old leader vowed to maintain the policies which have drawn such stinging criticism from the European Union and United States. And he launched a fierce new attack on both Belaruss liberal opposition and the West, saying that his state of 10 million had rejected the coloured revolutions that helped sweep leaders from power in ex-Soviet Georgia and Ukraine.
Four people have been killed and 14 wounded - including eight primary school students - after a warehouse exploded in southern Yemen, security officials say. Investigations are under way to determine the cause of Saturday's explosion in the warehouse in Muderiyat al-Sawadiyah, a town in al-Baydaa province, about 220km southwest of the capital, Sanaa. The building, owned by a weapons merchant, was in a residential area in the middle of the town, near Tariq Bin Ziyad elementary school. 
A group of about 40 rebel tribesmen downed arms and surrendered Saturday to authorities in Balochistan, officials said. A total of 40 Bugti tribesmen including five of their commanders have surrendered with weapons and explosives in Sui, DCO Abdus Samad Lasi told AFP. They surrendered unconditionally. The government is considering offering amnesty to Bugti fighters who were not wanted for laying landmines and attacks on security forces, Lasi said. Bugtis spokesman Agha Shahid denied the allegations, and said the 40 men were robbers and had no links with the tribal elder.
There are no foreigners in 
The inspectors, who landed in Iran on Friday, were scheduled to remain in the country for five days. Saeedi described the inspectors visit as a prescheduled trip within the framework of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. IAEA chief, 
The United Nations (UN) should be made more effective to eradicate poverty and sustain development and humanitarian programmes, Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz told the second meeting of a UN panel on reforms on Saturday. Aziz said that developing countries should be considered when the UN provides assistance to various countries for development projects. He told the meeting that the UN panel would complete its suggestions by August so that they could be tabled in the UN General Assemblys meeting in September. UN Secretary General Kofi Anan also addressed the meeting.
North Koreas defence minister warned Saturday that a pre-emptive strike is not the monopoly of the United States, in comments carried by the Norths official news agency. We will never sit with arms folded and watch until the US attacks us, said Kim Il Chol, vice marshal of the Norths Korean Peoples Army, according to the official Korean Central News Agency. A pre-emptive strike is not the monopoly of the US, he said. 
Life in Zimbabwe is shorter than anywhere else in the world, with neither men nor women expected to live to 40, 
The 
AN ISRAELI missile strike killed six Palestinian militants at a training camp in Gaza, medics said, hours after two Palestinian gunmen died in a similar raid that Israel said was aimed at rocket launchers. The Israeli military confirmed it had targeted a camp used by militants affiliated with President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah group. Palestinian witnesses said the Abu el-Reesh Brigades, an armed wing of Fatah, had used the camp to train their militants.
The Australian Federal Police has suspended an officer after he consulted a clairvoyant about a death threat made to the Prime Minister. 
