The town that would give Abu Musab Zarqawi his notorious moniker is a hard place â treeless and tough, cinder-block apartment houses punctuated by drab mosques. They say you have to be a thug to make it in the streets here, and the young Zarqawi had all the credentials: He ran with a fast crowd, fought easily and covered his skin with tattoos.
That was back in the 1980s, before he turned to religion. Before the call to jihad rang through the Arab world, sweeping away young men who could discern no more-promising prospects. Before U.S. leaders labeled Zarqawi as the mastermind behind some of the bloodiest mayhem in postwar Iraq.
Back then, his name was Ahmed Khalayleh.
In truth, Abu Musab Zarqawi is not a name, but rather a collection of personal details: It means father of Musab, native of Zarqa. To his neighbors and friends, he is still Ahmed, a man they struggle to reconcile with the American description.
They say Zarqawi may be a troublemaker, a terrorist leader more militant than Osama bin Laden. But even his mother, before she died of cancer here a few months ago, told a visitor that her son was not smart enough to be a logistical and ideological linchpin.
One of his neighbors, a bespectacled sales clerk a few years younger than Zarqawi, who is believed to be 38, grinned at the memory of the younger, secular Ahmed. "He was so far away from religion," said the neighbor, who insisted that heâd be in danger if he gave his name.
"He went out with a gang that liked to drink," he said. "We even called him the Green Man because he had so many tattoos. He was drunk once and he had a fight with his cousin. He had a knife in his hand and he cut his cousin. After that he quit drinking, and he started praying."
Zarqawiâs tribe, the Bani Hassan, is one of the largest in Jordan, boasting members of parliament, generals and ministers. But Zarqawiâs own family was poor and pious. His father was a traditional healer and the tribal chief of his hardscrabble neighborhood. The second of five children, Zarqawi was born in an apartment that sits low over a mechanics shop, across the street from a graveyard.
A good student, Zarqawi maintained a B average until, abruptly and inexplicably, he dropped out of high school one semester shy of graduation. He married his cousin, and took a job as a maintenance man for the Zarqa municipality, but soon grew listless and quit.
By the late 1980s, the jihad in Afghanistan against Soviet occupation was in full swing. Young Muslim men from all over the world were making their way to the Afghan battlefields to seek their destiny. Zarqawi joined the wave even though, by most accounts, he still wasnât particularly religious.
On that first trip to Afghanistan, Zarqawi seemed to be looking for himself, associates say. He huddled over the Koran at the edge of battle and by campfires at night; he drifted between fighting and writing about the battles as an aspiring war correspondent for an Islamic newspaper in the Pakistani city of Peshawar.
"He spent all night reading the Koran and praying," said Saleh Ilhami, a Jordanian fighter who met Zarqawi in Afghanistan and later married his sister. "He was feeling how the Islamic nation was suffering. At that time, he could recite the Koran without reading because he was spending so much time studying."
The young men fancied themselves as figures in an epic battle etched in glory against the rugged mountains of Afghanistan. Those years changed them forever, and left much of the Arab world struggling to tamp down the fevered fighters who came trooping home again.
"It was a great thing, a great life, the best thing I ever saw in my life," Ilhami said. "I felt I was born when I went there. That was the real life."
Ilhami had earned a degree in journalism from the University of Jordan; he said he traveled to Afghanistan in 1989 to work as a war correspondent. A year later, he was roaming the mountains near Khowst, snapping photographs, when he stepped on a land mine. His leg was blown off, and he was taken over the Khyber Pass to Peshawar for treatment.
Zarqawi had seen his fellow Jordanian evacuated, and admired his bravery. When Ilhami had healed, Zarqawi introduced himself, and asked him to show him how to write stories. The two became friends.
When Zarqawi heard that Ilhami wanted to get married, he suggested his younger sister. Ilhami accepted, and the young woman was flown to Peshawar, where the two married in 1991. "After that, I respected him a lot and loved him a lot," Ilhami said. "He was paying tribute to me."
By 1992, the scene in Afghanistan was souring. The Soviets were long gone, and the mujahedin were beginning to turn on each other. Zarqawi went home to Jordan, worldly and a little hardened, but not yet radicalized, say those who knew him.
"This was the beginning of the troubles between Zarqawi and the regime here," said Ilhami. "You know, he who spends a lot of time in jihad, it becomes like oxygen for the human being. It becomes very hard to leave it."
Many of the returning warriors had a hard time fitting back into their homelands, he said. Zarqawi struggled with disorientation. At the same time, Jordanian intelligence agents were keeping a close watch on the Afghan veterans.
Zarqawiâs ideas hardened when he fell under the sway of a cleric named Issam Barqawi, commonly known as Abu Mohammed Maqdisi. The Palestinian figurehead of the militant Bayat al Imam network in Jordan, Maqdisi was a white-hot radical, a man described by Islamists here as too extreme for Bin Laden.
Maqdisiâs writings allegedly helped inspire the truck bombing of Saudi Arabiaâs Khobar Towers in 1996 that killed 19 U.S. servicemen.
Maqdisi has spent his life in and out of prison; he remains locked up in Jordan, convicted of trying to overthrow the government to establish an Islamic caliphate.
"Ahmed had the same ideas as Maqdisi," said Mohammed Dweek, a Jordanian lawyer who defended both men in the 1990s. "Even he admitted that he was a copy of Maqdisi. But Maqdisi is dangerous 1,000 times more than Zarqawi. He has this charm, this charisma, and he can convince anybody."
Along with Maqdisi and most of his followers, Zarqawi was arrested in the early 1990s for obtaining explosives. Members of the network were put away as political prisoners in Jordanâs Swaqa prison.
It was there that a soft-spoken Islamic scholar named Youssef Rababa met Zarqawi and Maqdisi. Rababa was the head of a small cell called Ajlun Minds. Jordanian authorities had arrested the members on charges of planning a bombing.
It was the mid-1990s, and in the scrappy universe of the Jordanian prison yard, Islamist organizations functioned as a species of jailhouse gangs. They provided protection, distraction and a sense of spiritual brotherhood. The members shared religious tracts, gathered for Friday prayers and stuck together when fights broke out.
Rababa remembers Zarqawi as a hothead, saddled with a violent temper that sometimes blotted out common sense. Zarqawi earned a reputation for ferocity in the face of authority; he would unabashedly tell prison guards that they were nonbelievers. He inspired respect, if not admiration, and when he felt threatened, heâd fight.
"He was a leader with a very strong personality. The other prisoners, they were afraid of him," Rababa said. "He likes to be a leader, and he likes to have his authority between his hands."
Zarqawi took to preaching after Friday prayers, lecturing the network on the dangers of nonbelievers and the injustice of secular Arab regimes. He gained strength and gradually shed his role as Maqdisiâs eager disciple.
"The last year in prison, there was a big change in their relationship," Rababa said of Maqdisi and Zarqawi.
"It seemed they had a big disagreement. The last month in prison, Maqdisi was alone. Zarqawi took his group."
In 1999, shortly before his release, Jordanian authorities grew worried about Zarqawiâs power over other prisoners and transferred him to a smaller jail.
Even in the realm of armed Islamists, Zarqawi is a hard-line radical, Rababa said. U.S. and Jordanian officials have identified him as a member of Al Qaeda, but his acquaintances here said his relationship with the organization was ambiguous. Zarqawi knew Bin Laden in Afghanistan, but there was a doctrinal split between them, they said.
"Osama bin Laden, heâs in the middle, heâs not so fanatical. Heâs against the Americans and the Jews, the foreigners on the Arabian Peninsula and the Jews in Palestine," Rababa said.
"Zarqawi," he continued, "is against anybody whoâs kafir [a nonbeliever]. He is much more extreme than Bin Laden. His idea was very clear â we have Muslims, and we have kafir."
Zarqawi told Rababa that it was a duty to attack nonbelievers wherever they could be found â Europeans were fair game, and so were fellow Arabs, particularly Shiite Muslims.
Still, looking back now, searching for traces of the terrorist described in news reports from Iraq â and beyond, with anti-terror investigators linking him to plots and attacks from Western Europe to Jordan â Rababa was bemused. He didnât believe Zarqawi had the intellectual ability to pen an oft-quoted letter intercepted by American officials, who claim it was meant for Bin Laden. In it, U.S. officials say, Zarqawi claims responsibility for 25 suicide attacks in Iraq and lays out a blueprint for plunging that country into sectarian chaos.
"I donât believe it," Rababa said. "Even if heâs still alive in Iraq, I donât think heâs running operations. Heâs a simple man. Heâs simple in his capabilities. Heâs smart, but heâs not high-level."
When Jordanâs King Abdullah II took the throne in 1999, he pardoned political prisoners and Zarqawi was set free. He spent a month with his wife and children at home here, but couldnât find work. He grew restless and returned to Pakistan on a six-month visa.
In 2000, Zarqawiâs visa expired, and, according to his brother-in-law Ilhami, the Pakistani government refused to extend it.
Zarqawi found himself adrift and isolated. Detained by Pakistanâs immigration authorities after Friday prayers, he was asked to leave the country, but he didnât have anyplace to go. He had sworn off Jordan, where he felt penalized and harassed.
"He didnât know where to go," Ilhami said. "He didnât know what to do."
Zarqawi moved over the border to Afghanistan, before the U.S.-led war to topple the Taliban regime began.
His alliances there are hazy. According to U.S. and European intelligence agencies, Zarqawi set up a camp in Herat that specialized in the use of chemical and biological weapons. At least one militant has confessed to meeting Zarqawi at an Al Qaeda camp.
But Zarqawiâs relationship with Al Qaeda remained contentious, according to a source who was in Afghanistan at the time.
Al Qaeda suspected he had become a Jordanian agent while he was in prison, and many in the network kept their distance. Tensions grew so pronounced that they even shot him in the leg, the source said.
Like the man himself, Zarqawiâs leg is at the center of a tangle of conflicting reports.
There are various accounts of the injury, which may have been suffered during the 2001 war with the Americans, and may have forced him to flee Afghanistan. Some reports indicate that the leg was so mangled that it was amputated in Iraq.
What seems certain is that Zarqawi fled once again, this time moving overland through Iran, and settling into the mountains of the Kurdish region of northern Iraq. He had compatriots there; Jordanians from his hometown and from prison had set up camp with members of the militant group Ansar al Islam. Zarqawi is believed to have stayed there at least until the U.S. invasion of Iraq began.
Since then, Zarqawi seems to have vanished into a whirl of conflicting reports, and potential propaganda.
Back in Jordan, where Zarqawi has been sentenced to death in absentia, his increasing notoriety is met with equanimity. His first wife, his four children and his tribesmen still live here. At some point, Zarqawi took a second wife; she went to Afghanistan with him and never came back.
The family doesnât speak much to the media.
Some sources say Zarqawi has been in touch with them from Iraq, but his brother-in-law denied that he had heard from the fugitive.
Many people here say the same thing: The Americans were looking for a boogeyman, for somebody to blame.
"I donât think heâs a leader worth this money," said Dweek, the lawyer. "Anyway, if they get Zarqawi, so what? Theyâll have 1,000 more Zarqawis after him."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
07/02/2004 8:56:03 AM ||
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#1
At least give us a coffee warning next time Dan.
It was an LA Times article, which means you'd have to register to read most of it, and it also has a lot of new info on Zarqawi available. I tried to edit it as much as possible, but given Zarqawi's role in the insurgency I thought that this might well be useful information to have when it comes to evaluating the man.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
07/02/2004 9:03 Comments ||
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#4
LAT register : californiainsider password: insider
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/02/2004 9:28 Comments ||
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Wow, Dan... This is a trip - I'll prolly read this 10x, data mining. Dan, regards venturing into the pit (El Lay Times), better you than me, lol!
Our pal Zarqi, now that we're all so chummy and everything, followed the human drive to find a niche which filled his needs: change, to belong, to be something / somebody, be rewarded. Of course, in the sick and twisted world of ME and Islamic indoctrination, the options are unbelievably (to us) limited. Maqdisi took it to the next level - offering the lure of being a big fish in a little pond. Status and Authority, in jihadi-world currency, for the boy that all of his pre-jihadi acquaintances uniformly describe essentially as a ne'er-do-well nobody. Those low expectations and derogatory attitudes can be a real motivator. He's not working for AlQ - he's got his own agenda and they are/were merely a convenient temporary ally to advance it. Now he's gone Hollyweird and the Western media is his lover. The Zarqawi Channel is on.
I guess he showed them, huh? Showed them all.
The problem of the ME (and other obvious shit-holes) isn't getting the Paleos their own state - they wouldn't have a clue what to do with one - other than copy the other failed ME state models. Bush is dead solid perfect correct: the whole thing needs to be washed away and reformed via democracy. Democracy, though obviously imperfect, is the only system that man has come up with that actually works -- it delivers what's missing in the other "systems", i.e. what people really want, deep down. Choices. Options. Individualism. Opportunity. Freedom.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
The conclusion is, unfortunately, absolutely correct: there will be 1,000 more. And this will remain true until the despots, dictators, mullahs, royalty, imams, and Islam - which all contribute to the totalitarian lock-step hopelessness - are uprooted and replaced -- with options, with freedom. With a chance to be happy and find satisfaction as a family man with "a job as a maintenance man for the Zarqa municipality." Until the power structure of the ME and Islam is wiped out, leveled, destroyed, it will always be a fertile cesspool of hopelessness and jihadi (or whatever) recruiting.
The Firesign Theater has a bit where one HS kid asks his friend what he plans to become. His answer isn't as facile as first blush might suggest -- in fact it's far truer and more common than most will acknowledge:
"I thought I'd find a bunch of guys who dress alike and follow them around."
Sorry, Zarqi, you're fucked. Now die you twisted zipperhead.
#6
But even his mother, before she died of cancer here a few months ago, told a visitor that her son was not smart enough to be a logistical and ideological linchpin.
Heh, this had to be the ultimate insult - Mom calling him a dumbass.
Most Americans have a false idea of the shadowy, worldwide terrorist network led by al-Qaida, according to a former CIA operative who collected the life histories of almost 400 members of the deadly movement. The stereotype that these terrorists are poor, desperate, single young men from Third World countries, vulnerable to brainwashing, is wrong, Dr. Marc Sageman told an international terrorism conference in Washington this week.
Most Arab terrorists he studied were well-educated, married men from middle- or upper-class families, in their mid-20s and psychologically stable, said Sageman, a psychiatrist at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Many of them knew several languages and traveled widely.
But when they settled in foreign countries, they became lonely, homesick and embittered, he said. They felt justifibly humiliated by the weakness and utter backwardness of their homelands. They formed tight cliques with fellow Arabs and drifted into mosques more for companionship than for religion. Radical preachers convinced them it was their duty to drive Americans from Muslim holy lands, killing as many as possible.
Sageman served as a CIA case officer in Afghanistan from 1987 to 1989, running agents against the Soviet occupation. In a book, "Understanding Terror Networks," published in May, he traced the roots of the movement to a centuries-old Islamic tradition dedicated to purifying Muslim lands of "infidels" and restoring the past glories of Islam.
He described al-Qaida and its global allies as "a violent Islamist social movement held together by an idea: the use of violence against foreign and non-Muslim governments or populations to establish an Islamist state in the core Arab region." For its members, terrorism is "an answer to Islamic decadence - a feeling that Islam has lost its way," he said.
Sageman drew his data from transcripts of legal proceedings against terrorists, unclassified government documents, police wiretaps, scholarly articles and news accounts. He acknowledged that his sources are incomplete and sometimes of questionable reliability. Because he dealt only with public records, he said, his sample may be biased toward the better-known, more prominent members of the movement. Nevertheless, his work appears to be the most thorough profile of the members of the terrorist network available outside the walls of government secrecy.
Sageman focused on the sprawling collection of terrorist cells inspired by Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida organization. His findings about the social and psychological makeup of the terrorist network "sound perfectly plausible to me," said Jessica Stern, a former expert on terrorism at the National Security Council whoâs now at Harvardâs Kennedy School of Government in Cambridge, Mass. "Itâs consistent with my findings." In her interviews with terrorists, Stern found a common thread to be a feeling of humiliation for the decline of their once-great Islamic culture. "If youâre humiliated, you want to blame somebody and try to fix it," she said.
Following are some of Sagemanâs conclusions:
Until recently, the central staff or core leadership of the terrorist movement, headed by Saudi Arabia native bin Laden, consisted of about 38 members, two-thirds of them from Egypt, with a smattering of Saudis, Kuwaitis, Jordanians and other Middle Easterners. The Egyptians joined al-Qaida when it formed in the 1980s. They were mostly Islamic militants involved in the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.
Since September 2001, about two-thirds of the original leadership has been killed or captured, and replaced by "younger, more aggressive new leaders," Sageman said. "The network has become more decentralized and more disconnected from the central staff. This has resulted in more frequent and more reckless operations."
The majority of the network is made up of Middle Eastern Arabs from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Yemen and Kuwait, as well as North Africans from Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. Thereâs also a contingent of second-generation Muslim immigrants in France, Spain and other Western European countries.
A smaller group of Southeast Asians is centered in Indonesia and Malaysia.
Because of its decentralization, the network "provides no hard targets for military operations," Sageman said. "The war on this type of terror must be fought on many fronts."
He suggested police surveillance of local cells, interception of their communications and tracking terroristsâ friends and relatives, since they are also likely to be members or supporters.
The leadership and the bulk of the members came from comfortable upper- and middle-class homes, challenging the argument that poverty breeds terrorism. Some were doctors, lawyers, engineers or other professionals. Only a small percentage of Sagemanâs sample were poorly educated. Fewer than one-fifth lacked a high school education. Seventy percent had at least some college; several had masterâs or doctoral degrees. Except for the Southeast Asians, 90 percent went to secular schools. Contrary to the view that terrorists are single, childless, immature young men, lacking any attachment to society, nearly three-quarters of the sample were married. Most had children.
Some people think terrorists are criminals or antisocial psychopaths. But Sageman found that most had normal childhoods without any trouble with the law. Those who later turned to petty crime did it to raise money for their actions, not for personal gain. "The data suggest that these were good kids who liked to go to school and were often overprotected by their parents," he said. "They are not essentially evil, but they definitely act evil."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
07/02/2004 12:36:31 AM ||
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#2
spoiled moderately rich religious fanatic losers from a culture that structurally can't make it in the modern world so let's kill jews crusaders infidels who are holding us back along with our insufficiently pious brothers--does the psychological term PROJECTION ring a mullah's scrotum
Posted by: SON OF TOLUI ||
07/02/2004 1:07 Comments ||
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#3
BINGO. This goes in my bookmarks. This article finally gives a quantitative account of Muslim terrorist's socio-economic class that jibes with every individual profile I have ever read in the media. What mystifies me is that after writing such profiles, the media then insists that these terrorists are the ppor and downtrodden of the umma. How does the media hold such directly countervailing views without their heads exploding?
My take on the sources of Muslim terrorsits are:
1. Religious fanatics indoctrinated since youth that Islam must conquer the world, i.e. Saudi Arabia.
2. Muslims who were raised that Islam and Muslim society is the pinnacle of accomplishment and justice. But they realize, via contact with the West, that Muslim society is backward and weak. In other words, they are spoiled and arrogant boys who believe they have a Allah-given right to be top dog. They become radicalized and believe that by destroying better societies, the Umma can be the top dog.
Posted by: ed ||
07/02/2004 1:30 Comments ||
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In one of my first conversations with a Saudi back in '92 he told me, and I'll have to paraphrase it, that the oil was Allah's gift to the Arabs - an appropriate repayment for all those years of being Bedu wandering the wasteland. Immediately reminded me of a wacko friend who always thought it was his right to win the lottery. Same attitude. Same gossamer grasp of reality.
#5
I don't know anyone who bought the stereotype about these idjits being poor and desperate, other than the LLLs who want to pin everything on whitey's exploitation of the third world.
#7
But they realize, via contact with the West, that Muslim society is backward and weak. In other words, they are spoiled and arrogant boys who believe they have a Allah-given right to be top dog. They become radicalized..
#9
I saw somewhere a quote to the effect that the factor that best correlates with tendency for a muslim to become a terrorist, more than class, etc was how authoritarian the country of origin was. The more authoritarian, the more likely to become a terrorist. Not sure how they quantified that - anyone else seen that, or have links?
Al Qaida and other Islamic insurgency groups in Iraq have succeeded in attracting sufficient funding to maintain attacks on the U.S.-led coalition. A report by the Washington Institute asserted that Al Qaida and aligned groups have established cooperation to ensure funding to like-minded insurgents who operate in Iraq. The report said the groups help each other with logistics and the flow of money for operations.
"Money has not been a constraint on the activities of Al Qaida, Palestinian terrorist groups, or the jihadists and Baâathists fighting coalition forces in Iraq," the report, authored by counter-terrorism expert Matthew Levitt, said. "This will continue to be the case until more serious action is taken toward restricting the financing of terrorism. Acting against terrorist financing is one of the best ways to advance the war on terror, the Roadmap to Israeli-Palestinian peace, and the stabilization of Iraq."
The report said the principal terrorist threat today stems from what he termed the web of shadowy relationships between loosely affiliated groups.
But, but ... John Kerry said all we need is better law enforcement.
The sponsors of such groups, whether countries or other organizations, do not preside over a network with an organizational or command structure. But he said the funding of many of these groups might be traced to a network of Saudi-sponsored charities based in Herndon, Va.
They read Rantburg too.
Al Qaida operations commander Abu Musab Al Zarqawi was cited as a prime example of the roving international Islamic insurgent. Al Zarqawi has links to a range of groups for which he performs services. They include Hizbullah, Usbat Al Ansar and Palestinian insurgents. The report said Al Zarqawi received more than $35,000 in 2001 for providing expertise and components for suicide strikes, including a ways to infiltrate suicide bombers into Israel and provide training on explosives, poisons, and remote-controlled devices.
"Militant Islamist organizations from Al Qaida to Hamas interact and support one another in an international matrix of logistical, financial, and sometimes operational terrorist activity," the report, based on Levittâs testimony to U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs on Oct. 22, said. "Unfortunately, two years into the war on terror, these and other groups, along with a variety of Middle Eastern state sponsors, still receive inconsistent attention despite a sharp rise in their activity. Inattention to any one part of the web of militant Islamist terrorism undermines the effectiveness of measures taken against other parts of that web."
Posted by: Mark Espinola ||
07/02/2004 12:28:30 AM ||
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Could it be possible that you are staring right into the most spectacular financial opportunity of the century? Operation: Iraqi Freedom will undoubtedly be a war marked in history for loss and tragedy, American victory, and the rise of a nation with a new democratic government. But could it also be a war historically remembered for the financial opportunity it created for the sharp investors who keenly recognized an ephemeral chance at the right time?
The War on Iraq ended with a nation placed on the footstool of many new operations. An old dictator was removed; a new government was instilled, and the old currency, each note stamped with the face of the now powerless Saddam Hussein, was suddenly valueless and burned in the streets by American soldiers. In its place entered a new currency, beautifully created with the input of the people and history of Iraq. The United States funded this new currency, artistically crafted by the De La Rue, the worldâs premier currency printers. Unveiled during a press conference in the capitol city of Bagdad, the new Iraqi currency was introduced. A historic university, erected in the thirteenth century, is etched into the one thousand dinar bills. A serene waterfall graces the front of the periwinkle five thousand dinar notes. And a humble, hardworking farmer holds up a sheaf of wheat on the most substantial bill of all: the twenty five thousand dinar note.
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The United States and several other nations are in the process of taking every measure possible to rebuild Iraq. The country is gaining stability, and could soon be in its way to becoming an independent and prosperous nation. What would this mean for the value of the Iraqi currency? Certainly it would mean a rise in its value. It could go back to what it was worth before the war, or more. And that would mean an unbelievable return for anyone who invested in it today. It could mean thousands, hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars for someone who had a million dinars today.
The value of the Iraqi economy has nearly doubled since the capture of Saddan Hussein. This has many investors predicting that the dinar will continue to rise in value as well. Even without help from other nations, with the worldâs second largest oil reserve and the worldâs largest gas reserve, it is abundantly clear that Iraq has the resources available to expand and become an extremely prosperous nation. In fact, economists and investors are speculating that Iraq has the potential to become among the wealthiest nations in the world.
Today you can take advantage of this potential and be part of those that benefit from Iraqâs success the most. Purchasing the Iraqi dinar at its most vulnerable point in history could mean a fortune in the near future. This means nothing short of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for todayâs forward-thinking investors.
Learn more about this unique opportunity and how to purchase the dinar at www.Iraqi-Dinar.com with American Trading Company.
The war on terrorism is increasingly calling on the skills of computer technicians, hackers and even Internet "vigilantes" to fight the battle. As terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda turn to the Internet to broadcasts their messages, recruit members, and raise money, law enforcement officers are honing their own technical skills to trace offending websites and computer users.
James Kirkhope is the research director for the Washington-based Terrorism Research Center, which examines links between terrorism and technology. He said that once a suspected terrorist website appears, law enforcement officers around the world begin the hunt to find it and, if warranted, close it down. "One of the main steps law enforcement agencies do is to identify [the] web server of a particular website, and thatâs usually the source that law enforcement will go to to pull the plug on terrorist websites," Kirkhope said.
But the task is not so easy. While each server and personal computer on the Internet has a unique address, locating an offending website is not as simple as -- for example -- tracing a telephone call.
But, but ... John Kerry says all we need is better law enforcement.
One of the main obstacles is the nature of the Internet itself -- relatively open and unregulated, yet highly interconnected. Kirkhope said one of the tricks terrorist groups use is to link a website from server to server -- to "bounce" it, as the practice is known. This, in effect, conceals the identity of the original server and the siteâs author.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
07/02/2004 12:28:30 AM ||
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From Slate, an article by Lee Smith
.... "Beheadings are not mentioned in the Koran at all," Imam Muhammad Adam El-Sheikh, co-founder and chief cleric at the Dar Al Hijrah mosque in Falls Church, Va., told USA Today. Yvonne Haddad, a professor at the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University agreed, telling New York Newsday, "There is absolutely nothing in Islam that justifies cutting off a personâs head." If reporters bothered to open up a copy of the Quran, say, N.J. Dawoodâs Penguin Classics translation, theyâd find at least two relevant passages:
God revealed His will to the angels, saying: "I shall be with you. Give courage to the believers. I shall cast terror into the hearts of the infidels. Strike off their heads, strike off the very tips of their fingers." (Sura 8, Verse 12)
"When you meet the unbelievers in the battlefield strike off their heads." (Sura 47, Verse 4)
... it is simply wrong to say that the Quran does not mention beheadings or that there is absolutely nothing in Islam that justifies decapitation. Islamic history is giddy with heads separated from their bodies, a tradition detailed in news outlets that are generally considered right-wing and on conservative Web sites, but apparently whitewashed in the mainstream press. .... We really wish the Muslims who are lending their expertise to our infidel press would tell the truth. Otherwise, this conversation between cultures isnât going to work. We are surely destined for a very violent clash of civilizations if one dialogue partner will lie about something that is written down for anyone â even American journalists if they make the effort â to read. ...
A group of American journalists has just returned from a trip to Syria and Lebanon, where they met with Syriaâs president, Bashar Assad, and the one-time spiritual guide of Hezbollah, Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah. What are these Americans reporting from their travels? That Arabs like Americans but not U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Is this true? Well, it is surely in the interests of an Arab dictator and a Muslim cleric who wrote fatwas permitting suicide bombings against Israeli civilians to say it is true. If U.S. journalists are going to serve as dragomans for various sponsors and theorists of terrorism to the American public, at least they could push their interview subjects a little harder. ....
One common complaint about Americans, including our press, is that we know very little about the Middle East. That may be true, but as complex as the subject is, knowledge of the Middle East is hardly gnostic wisdom available only to a few initiates. Thanks largely to the efforts of the oft-despised Orientalists, much of the history and literature of those cultures is accessible to anyone who is interested (a service, as this Muslim scholar explains, rendered to both the West and Islam). Much of it is even on the Internet. Certainly the press, when reporting on the Middle East and Islam, should question its sources at least as rigorously as it interrogates athletes suspected of steroid use, be more inclined to doubt than belief, and report fact rather than serve agendas. That is to say, whether or not beheading actually appears in the Quran is a matter of verifiable fact and not subject to the opinion of imams and professors who are apparently interested in advancing a message. If Americans have to start sorting through their news in the way that consumers of Arab media must, wondering which piece of information serves whose interests, we are inviting what would be a very ugly result of our current engagements in the Middle East: the Al-Jazeera-fication of the U.S. press.
Posted by: Mike Sylwester ||
07/02/2004 12:00:50 AM ||
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#1
"If Americans have to start sorting through their news in the way that consumers of Arab media must, wondering which piece of information serves whose interests, we are inviting what would be a very ugly result of our current engagements in the Middle East: the Al-Jazeera-fication of the U.S. press."
It's nice to hear someone in the semi-MSM (Slate's a weird blend of idiocy and brilliance) say it - but the bloggers are so far ahead of this curve it makes him look silly. Yet to the non-blogging populace, this is prolly earth-shattering / frightening. Get it past it folks - it's even worse that he's admitting!
'Tis best to read the sources the True Believers themselves read. There are many and English translations are commonly available - for the recruitment effort, of course. Many even have handy-dandy search engines, but I've discovered that these are as reliable as the Imam and the apologist professor in the story - there is obviously a list of search terms (which grows, I'm sure) which the engine "conveniently" fails to locate, though manual searches show the terms are there in the text. Reporters are lazy, just like everyone else, unless their hearts are in it. And, of course, the editorial / staff cleaning service will get the last shot. Simple rule is find out for yourself. Use their tools and sites. Then, no matter what sort of reporter or agenda machine is cranking out the MSM, you actually know.
#2
IF Americans have to start sorting through their news like some Soviet or Third World or Arab consumer of media? As .com said, it's not a question of if -- and not just on terrorism.
Ironic the reporter should put it that way -- I am one of several people I know who have been using precisely that comparison for a long time.
One difference is that people in the former Soviet republics I spent quite a bit of time in had always been well aware of the garbage they were being fed, and had in their own fashion learned to think for themselves. By contrast it's hard to find Americans -- at least "educated" and "sophisticated" ones -- who have even considered that much of the MSM feeds them a factually-challenged and often grossly distored idea of what's going on in the world.
#16
DF - No sweat, lol! I've always wanted to be allowed once, just once, to hear (in English, of course) a Friday sermon at one of the big-time moskkks with content and delivery unchanged - i.e. as if I, an infidel, wasn't there. Reading the transcripts, after translation in particular, loses so much of the impact - especially the gestures and volume and emphasis. How can we truly "know our enemy" in such a secretive game?
#17
as if I, an infidel, wasn't there...well they knew I was there and gave what appeared to be a really nice--let's get along, blah, blah, blah--sermon. Must have been my cameras.
#19
You know I've been aware of the way in which Muslims in the West often lie about Islam to Westerners for some time now. I used to wonder what was the attraction and why were they so willing to overlook all the evidence of fatal flaws in their belief system. Now, I am more and more convinced that for many Western converts apologists, Islam is attractive for the same reasons that Communism used to be attractive to lefties and the intellectual elites in the 40's & 50's. Like those people back then, they seem well aware of the drawbacks of the system they are espousing but seem more than willing to lie and obscure the facts because for them the end, in this case some silver bullet for all the world's problems, justifies the means. They feel that they know better than anyone else what is best for everyone and they aren't above any tactic to see the eventual triumph of their utopian vision.
These folks are well aware of what they are doing and they can be trusted no further than the old communists could be. They are essentially the same type of people separated only by historical circumstances.
I know its been said plenty of times already, but Islam in the West IS the new and improved communism particularly as Western converts envision it. By adding religion to it, it is even more seductive and dangerous than before and its also practically untouchable due to most peoples squeamishness about criticizing another persons religion. Its practically iron clad. Its definitely a trojan horse in our midst and we have to find the balls to see it for what it really is.
#21
I know its been said plenty of times already, but Islam in the West IS the new and improved communism particularly as Western converts envision it. By adding religion to it, it is even more seductive and dangerous than before and its also practically untouchable due to most peoples squeamishness about criticizing another persons religion. Its practically iron clad. Its definitely a trojan horse in our midst and we have to find the balls to see it for what it really is.
Good writing, peggy. I'd tend to argue that Islam has more in common with Nazism, but communism is good enough.
The West's current fascination with religion is making it far too easy to blur the lines that separate church and state. This same overemphasis upon religiosity has come back to haunt us in our inability to strip away the veneer of Islam's proclaimed faith and expose its political agenda.
This needs to be done very soon or else there will be little hope of adequately identifying terrorism's true agenda of global cultural genocide. It is the genocide factor which makes comparison with the Nazis resonate more for me. Other than that, much of the elitism, endemic corruption and need for blind faith in Islam closely parallels communism.
You are certainly right about the parallel with Nazism. The parallels between both communism and fascism and Islam are stunning when you really think about it. There is a uniform, a uniform method of address, a whole universal culture intended to replace all other culture with one uber-culture etc.
But I think I may have mis-spoke when I said that Islam is the new communism. In fact, it is rather the mother and father of all utopian pipe dreams which has invaded the West. Its the original and because it comes iron clad in religion, it is by far the greater challenge for us than any other ism we have ever dealt with before.
The fact that most people are scared to confront anothers religion is only one aspect that Isalm's religious deimension poses for us. The most dangerous thing is how seductive its combination of religion and utopian scheme can be. You have Westerners, who are fully aware of the abuses of other ism, converting to it because they fall prey to the argument that the problem with past utopian schemes was their lack of a religious foundation. These people become convinced that the religious dimension foolproofs the Islamic system from the outcomes of other ism's. Can you imagine the frame of mind of the utopian type of personality who stumbles upon what seems to be a divinely inspired utopian plan? Its pretty damn scary.
Its scary because, unlike "godless" amoral communism, Islam is far better at attracting people and far better at keeping the kind of well-intentioned person who would have been repelled by the other isms. While there are certainly those who are deliberately schemeing to make Islam supreme no matter the means, there are many more who really do fall for the argument that there is a clean division between the "real" Islam which is a wholly benign utopian vision for human life and the false Islam which has nothing to do with Islam even though it looks exactly like the horrific outcome of all past utopian schemes. These folks truly believe that a truly Islamic system cannot result in the deaths of millions and the oprression of everyone else who is either to stubborn, or stupid or rebellious to know what is best for them when such a result is the inevitable outcome of any such scheme as evidenced by the Islam throught out history as well as Stalinist Russia and Hitler's Germany. These folks are forced to gloss over the factual connections as much as the deliberate Islamist liars.
We are going to have to find some way to contain these people, the true believers in our midst as well as the schemers and do so without betraying our treasured values.
See what I mean when I say its the greatest challenge the West has EVER faced?
#23
Isn't it apparent by now that muslims have not been telling us the truth about what is and is not in the Koran? There are a number of websites and scholars that can cite specific versus and hadiths so you can see just what is condoned by islam. www.jihadwatch.org, www.islamreview.com and a number of others.
Posted by: jawa ||
07/02/2004 14:23 Comments ||
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#24
Jawa,
Thanks for the links. The truth is the answer to our problems. We will win in the end if we are devoted to dicerning it and boldly speaking it.
http://www.faithfreedom.org/ - Ex Muslims mostly denounce Islam
http://www.truthbeknown.com/islamquotes.htm - some useful quotes
http://www.secularislam.org/ Ibn Warraq's site criticising Islam from an agnostic point of view
http://www.muslim-refusenik.com/ my favorite Canadian Lesbian Muslim Irshad Manji's site
http://www.geocities.com/freethoughtmecca/home.htm- a site with some very humorous criticism of Islam (Including a proposed South Park episode where Kenny converts to Islam and becomes a suicide bomber to take out a sausage truck)
#27
Part of the problem is that since much of the media has no interest in actually seeing whether the story is true or not, they simply accept what they're told - and so we end up with a Qu'ran in the West that is apparently different from the one they actually read. So they can lie about what's there, and we'll just accept it until we actually check for ourselves. But most people are too lazy to do that. So it would appear that it's not entirely our fault that we "don't understand Islam;" they've helped make it that way!
Posted by: The Doctor ||
07/02/2004 16:27 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
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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
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