Hi there, !
Today Thu 02/14/2013 Wed 02/13/2013 Tue 02/12/2013 Mon 02/11/2013 Sun 02/10/2013 Sat 02/09/2013 Fri 02/08/2013 Archives
Rantburg
531212 articles and 1854438 comments are archived on Rantburg.

Today: 68 articles and 197 comments as of 6:26.
Post a news link    Post your own article   
Area: WoT Operations    WoT Background    Non-WoT        Politix   
Seven killed, 11 injured in attacks across southern Thailand
Today's Headlines
Headline Comments [Views]
Page 4: Opinion
6 16:23 Besoeker [336130] 
1 06:25 Besoeker [336126] 
2 19:27 Silentbrick - Schlumberger Squishy Mud Division [336149] 
3 19:27 lord garth [336134] 
1 00:52 JosephMendiola [336093] 
10 22:21 Alaska Paul [336129] 
Page 1: WoT Operations
0 [336110]
2 07:10 Alanc [336094]
0 [336147]
11 17:55 Muggsy Mussolini1226 [336102]
2 22:08 JosephMendiola [336145]
1 07:14 Alanc [336106]
0 [336110]
3 13:37 Redneck Jim [336119]
0 [336093]
0 [336103]
0 [336107]
0 [336099]
0 [336097]
0 [336106]
0 [336116]
3 17:19 remoteman [336114]
0 [336116]
0 [336114]
6 16:22 Shipman [336120]
0 [336105]
0 [336093]
0 [336096]
3 23:38 Charles [336143]
Page 2: WoT Background
2 22:07 Pappy [336102]
0 [336105]
3 17:57 tipper [336111]
2 21:59 JosephMendiola [336117]
0 [336081]
0 [336085]
0 [336101]
1 01:34 Omose Angeaque7353 [336101]
1 13:30 Redneck Jim [336078]
0 [336091]
1 18:38 JosephMendiola [336086]
0 [336102]
0 [336083]
0 [336080]
0 [336084]
0 [336087]
1 13:25 Redneck Jim [336084]
2 14:41 Skidmark [336091]
0 [336087]
Page 3: Non-WoT
9 23:43 European Conservative [336125]
0 [336105]
20 23:51 European Conservative [336127]
2 16:54 Besoeker [336116]
1 09:40 lord garth [336127]
1 06:04 Besoeker [336099]
5 16:51 Shipman [336097]
1 13:00 Redneck Jim [336099]
4 16:44 tu3031 [336096]
1 00:19 JosephMendiola [336098]
7 17:19 SMOD [336097]
8 23:57 CrazyFool [336159]
0 [336101]
12 19:32 SteveS [336133]
0 [336086]
Page 6: Politix
11 14:54 JohnQC [336085]
19 21:19 tu3031 [336130]
8 16:57 Shipman [336090]
14 21:08 tu3031 [336119]
7 15:25 Ebbang Uluque6305 [336094]
-Short Attention Span Theater-
Nom for Director CIA converted to Islam in KSA sez FBI agent
Posted by: Besoeker || 02/11/2013 00:00 || Comments || Link || [336134 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Mr. Brennan needs to have that question posed to him during the hearings. Expect a tacqiya answer or a fatwa issued on the apostate.
Posted by: Mugsy Glink || 02/11/2013 9:17 Comments || Top||

#2  He does seem overly fond of Islam.
Posted by: JohnQC || 02/11/2013 14:17 Comments || Top||

#3  Almost 100% of the people who've been drone-zapped by his orders have been moslem. So, whatever his religious status, he is undoubtedly considered revenge material by a significant number of moslems.
Posted by: lord garth || 02/11/2013 19:27 Comments || Top||


Africa North
Into the Fray: Egypt: A doomed nation?
It's not only Spengler who sees it, and it may soon be that those foolish enough to grasp the hook and flail of the pharaohs of Egypt will have much more urgent things than those Allah is said to hate.
Tens of millions of Egyptians might consider the epithet "Gift of the Nile" singularly misplaced.

Looking out across the vastness of Lake Tana, the source of the Blue Nile, it is difficult to see why Æthiopia is known as a land plagued by horrific droughts.
-- BBC, "Nile restrictions anger Æthiopia," February 3, 2005

Any action that would endanger the waters of the Blue Nile will be faced with a firm reaction on the part of Egypt, even if that action should lead to war.
-- Egyptian president Anwar Sadat -- cited in "The Waters Of Life," Time, April 23, 2006.

While Egypt is taking the Nile water to transform the Sahara into something green, we in Æthiopia -- which is the source of 85 percent of that water -- are denied the possibility of using it to feed ourselves... and forced to beg for food every year. -- Æthiopia's late prime minister Meles Zenawi, February 3, 2005.

The Greek historian Herodotus (c.484- 425 BCE) is credited with designating Egypt "The Gift of the Nile." Today, tens of millions of Egyptians might consider the epithet "gift" singularly misplaced.

Writing on the wall?

The recent unrest that has raged across Egypt has once again thrust the country into the center of international attention. Indeed, there is a growing realization that the gap between the challenges facing the country and its ability to meet them -- in even a minimally adequate fashion -- is widening, perhaps irretrievably, making a humanitarian catastrophe of staggering proportions evermore likely.

Continued on Page 49
Posted by: trailing wife || 02/11/2013 00:00 || Comments || Link || [336129 views] Top|| File under:

#1  The only solution for Egypt is to occupy Libya's oil producing regions.
Posted by: phil_b || 02/11/2013 2:28 Comments || Top||

#2  I seem to recall a big dam somewhere on that river. What happens if that falls down?
Posted by: Alanc || 02/11/2013 8:23 Comments || Top||

#3  Or springs a leak. A BIG leak.
Posted by: lotp || 02/11/2013 8:46 Comments || Top||

#4  Water is nice if you want to farm, but without effort, it is not sufficient.
Posted by: M. Murcek || 02/11/2013 8:59 Comments || Top||

#5  http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=lCRIsjJFRNo
Posted by: Glenmore || 02/11/2013 9:23 Comments || Top||

#6  Water is nice if you want to farm, but without effort, it is not sufficient.

What??? You mean Farmin'B Hard??
Posted by: Alanc || 02/11/2013 10:12 Comments || Top||

#7  They should just confiscate all the white-owned farms. Oh, wait...wrong country.
Posted by: SteveS || 02/11/2013 13:18 Comments || Top||

#8  Whatever happened to Farmin B. Hard? This site is so unwelcoming of noobs and folks with a different viewpoint.
Posted by: Shipman || 02/11/2013 16:54 Comments || Top||

#9  The answer to your question about doom is simple.

If you answer yes to any of these questions, you are in fact, doomed.

Is your country muslim?
Is your country socialist?
Is your country full of socialists who claim they aren't socialists?
Does Al Gore and Nancy Pelosi live in your country?
Posted by: Silentbrick - Schlumberger Squishy Mud Division || 02/11/2013 19:33 Comments || Top||

#10  Give them a big loan and F-16s. It's the only way out of this mess and into a bigger one.
Posted by: Alaska Paul || 02/11/2013 22:21 Comments || Top||


Home Front: WoT
The Silence of the Drones
In times of war, the law is not silent. War is not a moral wilderness: At the Second Lateran Council in 1139, the use of the crossbow was banned among European knights. Throughout history, there have been codes that even the hell of war could not override.

I own up to being conflicted about the use of drone strikes. Those 19 young Arabs who struck the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001, shredded the old notions and rules of war, erased the line between combatants and noncombatants, brought soot and ruin onto American soil. Our country had to be made ready for this new kind of war.

We waged big military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq, but the terrorists waged a twilight war of their own, bereft of scruples and limits. There would be no treaty of surrender we could enforce, no capital city to be subdued. Chased from Afghanistan, they turned up in Yemen and Somalia. They were soldiers of the catacombs, and they thrived in ungoverned spaces.

Targeted killing was the response of a great military power to the frustrations of this “asymmetrical” war. We didn’t know that larger world of Islam from which this war arose. We were sandbagged by regimes and rulers that feigned friendship with us as they winked at the terror that came our way.

What was one to make of the New Mexico-born radical imam Anwar al-Awlaki inciting his devotees to a holy war -- all in good Americanese? He wore no uniform, slipped into the badlands of his ancestral Yemen and mastered the new means of communication.

Awlaki’s Fate

In the strict legalism of things he was an American citizen, but he bore this country a deadly animus. No tears need be shed for him. The strike that killed him, in Yemen in September 2011, was a deed of just retribution. Presidential spokesman Jay Carney’s defense of the drone strikes as legal, ethical and wise can stand in the case of Awlaki. The executive had been granted broad powers under the Authorization for Use of Military Force in the aftermath of Sept. 11, and two presidents were given the leeway to prosecute this war on terrorism.

In truth, the public didn’t want to look too closely into the doings of our government. We left it to our intelligence agencies and our military to keep us safe. But there came a time -- after the doings of the night shift at Abu Ghraib became public -- when the writ granted our officials was withdrawn. Liberals declared an all-out ideological war against the administration of George W. Bush.

The horror, the horror: The renditions and the enhanced interrogation techniques and, yes, the 50 or so drone strikes used during the Bush years became, to the liberals, a matter of national shame. A rising politician in the Democratic Party, a former teacher of constitutional law at the University of Chicago at that, rode this sense of outrage to the pinnacle of political power. He posed as a moralist.

Barack Obama was certain that rendition and waterboarding and the prison at Guantanamo Bay were recruiting tools of the jihadis. We had sullied America’s reputation in lands beyond, and he would heal the damage. Our practices had run afoul of time-tested traditions and institutions, and in his stewardship, he promised, our values would again be a compass for our deeds abroad.

In hindsight, the great reckoning for Obama came at the end of the first year of his presidency. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a young Nigerian, a disciple of Awlaki, came close to bringing down an airliner over Detroit on Christmas Day 2009. It was farewell to Kumbaya foreign policy: The world was a menacing place.

Against the background of the stirring Obama oratory, and the euphoric claim that the president’s personal biography was a bridge to the world of Islam, the young Nigerian could have snuffed out the promise of the Obama presidency. From that close call, the president emerged a determined leader in the war on terrorism.

Stealth War

He had his trusted aide, John Brennan, in a windowless office in the White House, and Brennan knew the world of intelligence and terrorism. He knew the Arabian Peninsula, as he had served as an intelligence officer in Saudi Arabia -- a country where secrets and things unacknowledged are the coin of the realm.

Together the president and the spook oversaw a stealth war, and the president became his own targeting officer. (Obama going over kill lists recalls President Lyndon Johnson’s poring over the map of Khe Sanh in search of bombing targets in Vietnam; the marked difference is the anguish of LBJ, and by the telling, the serene confidence of Obama that this is a war of necessity and a just campaign.)

The drone strikes were the choice of a president who had given up on winning “hearts and minds” in the North-West Frontier of Pakistan. Secure in the knowledge that he can’t be outflanked from the right by the Republicans, Obama served up a policy that was economical -- and remote. Congress didn’t intrude, and save for the purists at the American Civil Liberties Union, there was no powerful intellectual lobby calling for accountability.

The passion had drained out of the progressives who had hounded Bush, Dick Cheney and Scooter Libby. Brennan had to step aside once when he was put up to head the Central Intelligence Agency, as a man tainted with the Bush legacy. His confirmation is certain this time around.

There remains the discrepancy between an extensive campaign of drones and a passive foreign policy that maintains -- the president’s very words -- that an era of war is ending. Forgive those Syrians left at the mercy of their dictator’s cruel war: It is hard to explain to them why those drones don’t somehow find their way to Bashar al-Assad’s bunker. We do anti- terrorism. Wars of rescue are not an American specialty nowadays.
Posted by: Beavis || 02/11/2013 08:40 || Comments || Link || [336130 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Together the president and the spook oversaw a stealth war, and the president became his own targeting officer. (Obama going over kill lists recalls President Lyndon Johnson's poring over the map of Khe Sanh in search of bombing targets in Vietnam;

Similar outcomes can be predicted as well.
Posted by: Besoeker || 02/11/2013 9:25 Comments || Top||

#2  I suppose what bothers me is not so much the drone program itself -- although there's a debate to be had there -- as putting the drone program in the hands of a man who already thinks he's God Almighty and has a personal enemies list.
Posted by: Matt || 02/11/2013 9:54 Comments || Top||

#3  How good is the intelligence that enables the targeting of a particular individual. How good is the ability to identify a person from a drone? I don't know--just asking?

I don't have a particular problem of using drones overseas to target enemies who are stateless, don't wear uniforms, and are uninhibited in their attacks on us abroad. Champ has been hypocritical on this program but came around to embrace it enthusiastically. Should he have checks and balances on him?

What would anyone think if such a program were used domestically? I can see some perp who has robbed a convenience store and murdered the clerk or owner heading down an L.A. freeway. There are the numerous police cars chasing the perp. The helicopters are overhead. An armed drone is overhead. I can hear the radio dialogue now. Car on the ground to targeter: "You got a clear shot at the perp?" Targeter: "Yeah, I got him lined up." Helicopter to targeter: "Confirm, you got a clear shot at the perp?" Targeter: "Check, I got him sighted up." The go-ahead is given for the targeter to take him {the perp] out. To Targeter: "Take him out when ready." The drone releases its missile, and the perp is incinerated on the freeway. Is this an appropriate scenario? The Targeter and the police are given the go-ahead to act as judge, jury, and executioneer to resolve the problem. Is this different than a police sniper acting to stop a situation? What if collateral damage occurs or a case of mistaken identity occurs?
Posted by: JohnQC || 02/11/2013 14:51 Comments || Top||

#4  a case of Mistaken Identity, will make either the victim, or their Heirs wealthy.
Posted by: Redneck Jim || 02/11/2013 15:38 Comments || Top||

#5  JohnQC, if we started routinely drone-zapping drivers fleeing police I suspect people would stop fleeing police - or certainly stop doing it twice.
Posted by: Glenmore || 02/11/2013 15:41 Comments || Top||

#6  #3 How good is the intelligence that enables the targeting of a particular individual. How good is the ability to identify a person from a drone? I don't know--just asking?

Persistent Surveillance imagery [Single Source Intelligence derived from a UAV] must generally be combined with other intelligence disciplines to make positive identifications of the kind you are inquiring.

Example: If Muktar rides a red Honda motorcycle and is known to visit his uncle's house [at a known location] on a certain day of the week, at a certain time, a so-called "pattern of life" can be developed.

If Human Intelligence Sources [HUMINT] reports that Muktar's uncle is expecting him to visit today, and he actually does, then your Pattern of Life on Muktar has enjoyed a 'one time' validation. If over time you record multiple visits by Muktar to his uncle, validated by multiple HUMINT reports, and a similar number of sightings from a drone..... your pattern of life becomes both accurate and predictable.

If, in addition of HUMINT reporting and UAV or Drone Imagery, other Special Intelligence reporting can be linked to Muktar's visits, then you have Positive Identification via Multiple Sources. Your reporting can now be classified as Actionable Intelligence.

Generally speaking, Positive Identification requires multiple intelligence or All Source reporting. An exception might be Muktar leaving his uncle's house and riding to a cave where he meets two other armed personnel engaged in a nefarious activity such as the construction or emplacement of roadside bombs. In Afghanistan and Iraq, this type of activity could easily make Muktar and his colleagues targetable.

Note: The term "Actionable Intelligence" should not automatically be equated to targeting alone. Among other activities, Actionable Intelligence can lead to contact, monitoring, solicitation for recruitment, and detention.


Posted by: Besoeker || 02/11/2013 16:23 Comments || Top||


Geller: Defending the West
Pamela Geller unmasks CAIR director as operative advancing Shariah

The Hamas-tied Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, took off its mask last week and joined the modern-day caliphate, the 57-government Organization of Islamic Cooperation in Cairo to discuss the No. 1 issue to the Muslim world: “Islamophobia to be major issue discussed at meeting of heads of state.”

Islamophobia: in other words, the imposition of the Shariah. You might think that the leaders from every Muslim country would convene to discuss the brutality of Shariah: the persecution, oppression and slaughter of non-Muslims in Muslim countries and the subjugation of women. You would think that they might look inward – but you’d be wrong. They want more of all that.

Hamas-CAIR Director Nihad Awad’s Facebook page carried this announcement: “CAIR Director to Tweet from OIC Summit in Cairo: Nihad Awad, the national executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, will tweet updates (@NihadAwad) from the two-day summit of the 57-member Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in Cairo that begins on Wednesday.”
Posted by: tipper || 02/11/2013 02:12 || Comments || Link || [336126 views] Top|| File under:

#1  CAIR, the vanguard of the newest American proletariat, a victim class perpetually in need of an all-encompassing national government to ease the agony of hate and Islamophobia through privilege, entitlement, and social justice.

One day soon we may see senior political leaders with Islamic names, and high-level agency nominees extolling the virtues of Islam. Praise be to Allan.
Posted by: Besoeker || 02/11/2013 6:25 Comments || Top||


India-Pakistan
The contagion spreads
[Dawn] IN a globalised world, it seems that religious Death Eaters are also exchanging notes on tactics and strategy. On Friday, gunnies in the northern Nigerian city of Kano killed at least 10 polio
...Poliomyelitis is a disease caused by infection with the poliovirus. Between 1840 and the 1950s, polio was a worldwide epidemic. Since the development of polio vaccines the disease has been largely wiped out in the civilized world. However, since the vaccine is known to make Moslem pee-pees shrink and renders females sterile, bookish, and unsubmissive it is not widely used by the turban and automatic weapons set...
vaccinators, nine of them women. The grisly incident drew instant comparisons to similar attacks in Pakistain at the end of last year. Suspicion for the attacks has fallen on Boko Haram
... not to be confused with Procol Harum, Harum Scarum, possibly to be confused with Helter Skelter. The Nigerian version of al-Qaeda and the Taliban rolled together and flavored with a smigeon of distinctly Subsaharan ignorance and brutality...
, dubbed by some as the 'Nigerian Taliban'. The group is one of Africa's deadliest Islamist beturbanned goon outfits; it has reportedly killed hundreds in Nigeria, including members of the security forces, Christians and those among Mohammedan holy mans opposed to Boko Haram's obscurant worldview. As in Pakistain, some holy mans in Nigeria have cast doubt over polio vaccines, claiming they are a Western 'plot' to eliminate Mohammedans. Such resistance to anti-polio campaigns has existed in Nigeria for around a decade. Apparently taking another cue from Pak beturbanned goons, Boko Haram has set a number of schools on fire in Nigeria, although Death Eaters in this country have been far more destructive, reducing hundreds of schools in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa
... formerly NWFP, still Terrorism Central...
and Fata to rubble.

Nigeria, Pakistain and Afghanistan are the only polio-endemic countries left in the world, with the West African state reporting the highest number of polio cases last year.
Considering this, the silence of Mohammedan religious authorities -- in these countries and elsewhere -- is unforgivable. Militants are dooming the future of children in Mohammedan countries, or those with large numbers of Mohammedans, making them vulnerable to disease and forcing them to stay illiterate. Unfortunately, the religious authorities have not yet mustered the courage to confront their bully boy worldview. Institutions with influence in the Islamic world -- such as Egypt's Al Azhar and the Saudi religious establishment -- need to play a far greater role in countering beturbanned goon propaganda against polio vaccinations. The OIC should also take up the issue with the seriousness it deserves. Meanwhile,
...back at the pond, Gloria slowly backed away from the eight-foot bull frog. If the creature croaked she would surely be deafened...
the help of those Mohammedan countries that have successfully elimin-ated the virus, Iran and Bangladesh among them, must be sought to counter the situation where polio persists. Militants cannot be allowed to jeopardise the future of countless children in the remaining polio-endemic countries.
Posted by: Fred || 02/11/2013 00:00 || Comments || Link || [336093 views] Top|| File under: al-Qaeda

#1  The Hard Boyz seem to think the kiddies won't notice iff its Dad, not Mom, that taking them to get their shots.
Posted by: JosephMendiola || 02/11/2013 0:52 Comments || Top||


Terror Networks
Essay: The other answer to global terrorism
Posted by: tipper || 02/11/2013 01:35 || Comments || Link || [336149 views] Top|| File under:

#1  The Bush Administration was afraid that pressure on the Saudis might lead the royal family to fail and be replaced by more dangerous extremists.

That is doubtful. The Saudis are duplicitous. Even the NYTs reported financial support of the royal family to the 911 hijackers.
Posted by: JohnQC || 02/11/2013 15:07 Comments || Top||

#2  Wait, again it's not the Vlad the Impaler option. Can't any of these guys think outside the box?
Posted by: Silentbrick - Schlumberger Squishy Mud Division || 02/11/2013 19:27 Comments || Top||



Who's in the News
35[untagged]
6Arab Spring
4TTP
3Govt of Pakistan
3al-Qaeda in North Africa
3Jamaat-e-Islami
2Govt of Iraq
1Boko Haram
1Govt of Iran
1Govt of Syria
1Jamaat-e-Ulema Islami
1Lashkar e-Jhangvi
1Muslim Brotherhood
1Thai Insurgency
1al-Qaeda
1Abu Sayyaf
1al-Qaeda in Pakistan
1al-Shabaab
1al-Nusra

Bookmark
E-Mail Me

The Classics
The O Club
Rantburg Store
The Bloids
The Never-ending Story
Thugburg
Gulf War I
The Way We Were
Bio

Merry-Go-Blog











On Sale now!


A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.

Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.

Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has dominated Mexico for six years.
Click here for more information

Meet the Mods
In no particular order...
Steve White
Seafarious
tu3031
badanov
sherry
ryuge
GolfBravoUSMC
Bright Pebbles
trailing wife
Gloria
Fred
Besoeker
Glenmore
Frank G
3dc
Skidmark

Two weeks of WOT
Mon 2013-02-11
  Seven killed, 11 injured in attacks across southern Thailand
Sun 2013-02-10
  Syrian troops, rebels clash over Damascus highway
Sat 2013-02-09
  India Executes Man Convicted in 2001 Attack on Parliament
Fri 2013-02-08
  Suicide bomber hits north Mali, troops clash in capital
Thu 2013-02-07
  Syrian Army Launches 'All-Out Attack' on Capital Region
Wed 2013-02-06
  Fat Lady Sings for Abd el Kader Mahmoud Mohamed el Sayed
Tue 2013-02-05
  Second big turban nabbed in northern Mali
Mon 2013-02-04
  Ansar Dine #3 arrested in northern Mali
Sun 2013-02-03
  Yemen Troops Kill 12 'Qaida Militants' in Restive South
Sat 2013-02-02
  Syria Suicide Attack on Regime Kills 53
Fri 2013-02-01
  Binori Mosque cleric among 10 killed in Karachi
Thu 2013-01-31
  Boko Haram 'commander' declares ceasefire
Wed 2013-01-30
  Mali and Niger forces retake Ansongo
Tue 2013-01-29
  Sahel jihadist groups splinter
Mon 2013-01-28
  Timbuktu mayor: Mali rebels torched library of historic manuscripts

Better than the average link...



Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
3.95.233.107
Help keep the Burg running! Paypal:
WoT Operations (23)    WoT Background (19)    Non-WoT (15)    (0)    Politix (5)