Coffee and food warning - you might feel the urge to vomit...
Jacques Chirac has pledged his "loyal friendship" to Tony Blair in a birthday greeting accompanying a gift of vintage wine. President Chirac used the Prime Minister's 50th birthday as a chance to build bridges after the Anglo-French divisions caused by the Iraq war.
The gift which arrived from Paris - six bottles of Chateau Mouton Rothschild and a crystal decanter - contained a note which amounted to more than just the polite pleasantries between world leaders. It was written in the very personal "tu" form of the French language instead of the formal "vous", offering "very warm wishes" and expressing the "personal estime" of the French President. The full message said: "Dear Tony, Knowing how much you love visiting France, it is my pleasure to offer you a present illustrating the quality of the land of our country, which you know so well. I am sending you my very warm wishes for happiness, health and success, and for your family. I add the expression of personal estime and my loyal friendship. Looking forward to seeing you in Evian (at the G8 summit in France next month)."
#1
Tony should be just SOOO touched that Jacques used "tu" instead of "vous". In return, Tony should call Jacques "tu-faced" rather than "two-faced". Personally, I'd set aside all six bottles for ship launchings and fill the decanter with a good Irish whiskey.
Posted by: Tom ||
05/06/2003 21:35 Comments ||
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#2
Along the same lines as what TGA said, unless Tony & Jacques are close friends, using "tu" is pretty damn condescending, even in a birthday greeting. I guess he still thinks he's Blair's superior.
And he scolded the Eastern Europeans for not being well behaved??? Pure unmitigated gall.....
Posted by: Baba Yaga ||
05/07/2003 0:44 Comments ||
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#3
Chiraq offered him Chateau Mouton Rothschild at a state dinner a couple years ago.
That would have been an intended insult, rather than a gaffe. Bush's refusal sent an interesting message that ChIraq would have been wise to have heeded. While it would have been easier for Bush to accept the wine, the message was that he would not allow decorum to be used to mask reality in his dealings.
Edited for brevity
Despite submitting a bid nearly 20 percent lower than that of its European rivals, Pratt & Whitney appears to be on the verge of losing a $3.6 billion contract to power a new Airbus military transport, ratcheting up transatlantic tension over fair trade. Germany, the United Kingdom and France - the main partners in Airbus' A400M transport program — are considering a veto of the Pratt engine, according to European press reports. French President Jacques Chirac was widely quoted last week as saying he would accept only a European engine. What, like something that powers the Citroen? This guy just keeps sticking it to us.
Airbus has delayed a decision on the contract while a consortium of French, German, British and Spanish engine companies reworks its bid. Unbelievable that we have to put up with this.
If Airbus gives in to European pressure, it raises new questions about protectionism in the wake of a European Union's "Star 21" study last year, which urges development of the continent's aerospace industry. U.S. manufacturers have long complained that it's hard to compete against state-subsidized European companies. Paul Nisbet, an analyst with JSA Research in Newport, R.I., said the dispute has been aggravated by disagreements about the war in Iraq - and by the aerospace recession, which hurt the business of aircraft and engine manufacturers globally. "It has been below the surface for a long, long time," Nisbet said. "It is just bubbling up." Ironically, Nisbet said, 80 percent of the work on Pratt's PW800 engine would have been done outside North America because of foreign partnerships arranged by Pratt in an effort to win the bid. Those partners would share in profits from the program.
Noel Forgeard, the chief executive of Airbus, told reporters last Wednesday that the Rolls-Royce offer was close to 20 percent higher than Pratt's. On Thursday, Airbus said it had agreed, at the request of several European governments, to give the European companies a chance to revise their bid. To some U.S. observers, Airbus was saying it would do what it could to make sure the Europeans got the work. "It's just another demonstration that Europe is sticking to its plan," aerospace consultant Mark A. Bobbi said. "It demonstrates the solidarity of those countries."
The blatant protectionism has infuriated executives at East Hartford-based Pratt and at United Technologies Corp., its corporate parent, according to one source. "They are clearly conflicted. At the moment, the issue is to what degree this is a work program to preserve the European defense industry and to what degree it is to provide a transport alternative and military lift at a reasonable cost," he said.
#1
Hurry GWB and get the Tax rates in the US reformed...Tax rates in the EU are a total shackel on entrprenuership, they also explain why the EU is doomed.
Government controls including interference with contracts and RFQ's are just the tip of the ice berg. France is a withering grape on a vine which just went through a hard winter. This country is on the verge of collapse, its oligarchic establishment amounts to a complete and oppressive hegemony on capital and freedom. Our pushing the envelope with Tax cuts will send our economy spiraling and leave these french trout in a stream they've polluted themselves with their arrogance and failed economic policy.
EFL looks like the Iranians had a scoop as reported yesterday, based on actual anti-Americanism in Germany; note the lack of scare quotes
THE strained relations between Germany and the United States took a turn for the worse yesterday after a senior Berlin diplomat was reported to have told Foreign Ministry colleagues that America was turning into a ?police state?.
The comments of JÌrgen Chrobog, the State Secretary, reported in the German Focus magazine, threatened to disrupt intense diplomatic efforts to repair the relationship between Gerhard Schröder, the Chancellor, and President Bush.
Herr Chrobog is said to have given a blistering critique of the US-German relationship during the annual meeting of German ambassadors...
[The Times]
Posted by: Kalle (kafir forever) ||
05/06/2003 04:35 pm ||
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TGA? that Chrobog still is an acquaintance of yours?
#2
At that time Chrobog was serving as the German ambassador to the United States. I don't see how he could have messed up the Balkans that much from Washington D.C.
A criticism of the Bush government does not have to be anti-American. You can hear and read much of the same in the UK or elsewhere.
#4
"Former U.S. secretary of state Lawrence Eagleberger has laid the blame for the civil war in former Yugoslavia squarely on the shoulders of Germany. Speaking on American PBS-TV in December 1994, Eagleberger declared that Germany bears "full responsibility" for the bloody conflict because of its "insistence on recognising Slovenia and Croatia at all costs" in November 1991. As predicted by the UN, the U.S. State Department and the European Community, the German action led to a wildfire escalation of the conflict to Bosnia, he said."
I'd have split Germany into a bunch of small countries and never allowed reunification.
#6
Interesting... does the associative reference to Morgenthau mean that you consider me a sort of "Jewish murderer" who wants to "enslave Germany"? (since that's usually how people throw his name around)
I'm all for freedom and peace for the people of Europe, and indeed German abuse of power and interference has been the root problem for a long time. The German opposition to the liberation of Iraq, and hence the support for Saddam's dictatorship, brought some rather bad memories.
Your little history of the Balkans omits the delivery of German weapons to Croatians _before_ they started to break away. Given how atrocious the whole thing has been, it is entirely legitimate to question the German attitude and ponder whether a peaceful transition might not have been possible --as happened in various other ex-communist dictatorships that did not suffer German interference.
#7
"Is that the same Lawrence Eagleburger who warned publicly against an invasion of Iraq without authorization from Congress and the U.N.?"
The last time I saw Eagleburger on TV (CNN'c Crossfire) he said going into Iraq is the right thing to do:
"I happen to believe it is the right thing to do. And we could have stood on our head in Lafayette Park and sung "The Star Spangled Banner" or whatever, and we weren't going to convince them. Why? Because we are now the only superpower in this world, and the rest of the world was doubtful that we were going to be too tough.
So while Brent is right, in the sense that we did not conduct a particularly good campaign, diplomatic campaign, to try to convince people, I'm telling you now, no matter what we did, we were not going to be able to convince most of the rest of the world that we were right, and particularly not when we had the French out there playing the games they were playing."
#8
"I'd have split Germany into a bunch of small countries and never allowed reunification"
This is pretty much in line with what Morgenthau proposed if I remember it well? In what position are you to propose such a thing?
I don't throw his name around like you say "people usually do". If you knew my biography you wouldn't doubt that.
And you should also know that there was no German opposition to the "liberation of Iraq". There was German opposition to the war against Iraq. How about that "peaceful transition" in Iraq you claim for Yugoslavia? Just in case you forgot... Milosevic is charged with genocide in The Hague.
#10
Yugoslavia may have been heading for breakup anyway - the usual criticism of German recognition is how that it accelerated matters, and didnt give time to prepare for how to deal with Bosnia. It would be hard to argue that Slovenia didnt have the full right to self-determination. Croatian independence on the other hand presented a real dilemna in terms of the serb minority. And it was quite predictable that with Slovenia and Croatia gone, Bosnia could not stay in a Serb dominated rump Yugoslavia. It was equally clear that Bosnian independence meant civil war.
The only defense of German action therefore is that Slovenia and particularly Croatia would have gone anyway. The article TGA cites indicates that war in Croatia was well underway when Germany recognized on Jan. 15. It does NOT make clear if such was the case on Dec. 15, when Germany promised to recognize UNILATERALLY.
Will need to look this up. If anyone else here has the chronology though, that would be appreciated.
A likely appointee to the interim Iraqi government said Belarus should be called to account for allegedly providing military aid to Saddam Hussein in violation of United Nations sanctions. "We have documents about this, and in any case we will raise this question in the U.N. Security Council and demand punishment for those Belarusian bureaucrats who took part in violating sanctions," Iyad Allawi, leader of the Iraqi National Accord, was quoted as saying in an interview published Tuesday in Vremya Novostei, a liberal independent daily. Allawi is one of five anti-Saddam leaders with whom U.S. officials have been consulting over the formation of Iraq's interim government, and he is expected to be one of that government's leaders.
Allawi said there was no evidence that Russia had given Saddam military aid while U.N. sanctions - imposed after Saddam's 1990 invasion of Kuwait - were in effect. However, Allawi said some of Iraq's $12 billion debt to Russia was for illegal deals and would not be recognized. "Robbery took place, not only from the Iraqi side," Allawi said. "We have information and we will give it to the Russian government." Allawi pointed in particular to former Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov, whom he accused of defending Saddam "for personal profit." Primakov, a Middle East expert, Soviet-era diplomat and spymaster who was a Pravda newspaper correspondent for the region during the Cold War, knew the Iraqi leader for decades. Russia dispatched him to Baghdad several times to try to avert war - first in 1990, then this year. "We have almost full certainty that Primakov received certain sums from Saddam for this (defending him)," Allawi said, without elaborating. The interview, conducted in Baghdad, did not say what Allawi's allegations were based on. Rumors about Primakov's alleged self-interest in Iraq have floated around for years. Russian Foreign Ministry officials, including Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, have vehemently denied them. Primakov's office was closed for Russia's May holidays and neither he nor his spokeswoman could be reached for comment Tuesday. Yevgeny Primakov, soon to be involved in a tragic (insert vehicle here) accident.
Allawi also said that all the government contracts with Russian companies are now terminated. Bwahahaha!
Many Russian oil companies have hoped to resume work in postwar Iraq; Russian analysts estimate the value of their contracts at tens of billions of dollars. You could of had these contracts renewed, but you got in bed with the French. Now all you have is a nasty rash.
Posted by: Steve ||
05/06/2003 08:11 am ||
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Primakov didn't use a bagman? We're missing something here, or Primakov's not that bright.
#2
I'm thinking Primakov was the bagman between the Kremlin and Baghdad. The bigger and more secret the deal, the bigger the bagman needs to be. Unless Primakov was setting up his own 401K plan, he was operating under orders. Either way, he is now expendable. Maybe that's why he is unavailable for comments.
Posted by: Steve ||
05/06/2003 10:47 Comments ||
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EFL
Prosecutors on Tuesday dropped charges alleging a Turkish man and his American girlfriend plotted to bomb a U.S. military base in Germany around last year's Sept. 11 anniversary, but upheld lesser charges of illegal explosives possession. Osman Petmezci, a 25-year-old Turk, was initially charged with planning to attack the U.S. Army's Criminal Investigation Department or a store on the base in this southwestern city. Prosecutors charged that the couple had anti-American and anti-Israeli views and that they had planned the attack to take place around the first anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. In final arguments Tuesday, prosecutor Joerg Richter maintained the materials in the apartment proved Petmezci wanted to build a pipe bomb, justifying charges of illegal explosives possession. But the trial evidence lacked "sufficient specificity" to uphold charges that the two plotted a bomb attack, he told the court. Petmezci has denied the charges, saying when the trial opened April 11 that he only wanted to make firecrackers. Eyzaguirre declined to testify during the trial. The case faltered last week when a prosecution witness retracted her earlier account to police that Eyzaguirre had mentioned two specific bomb targets at the base. Petmezci also is charged with theft because prosecutors allege he stole the chemicals from his workplace. In addition, he and Eyzaguirre are charged with drug violations for allegedly growing and using marijuana. Prosecutors are seeking a two-year and 10-month jail term for Petmezci and a one-year suspended sentence for Eyzaguirre, who was released from custody last week. Just like I predicted, no witness - no terror case.
Posted by: Steve ||
05/06/2003 08:05 am ||
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The decision follows claims he received money from former Iraqi regime. This guy rates right up there with the Cambridge spies.
My question: Why did it take this long?
George Galloway has been suspended by the Labour Party. The MP is accused of bringing the party into disrepute after complaints about an interview he gave to an Arabic TV station - in which he attacked Tony Blair for his stance on Iraq. The MP is also at the centre of claims he was in the pay of Saddam Hussein.
Mr Galloway immediately hit back at the suspension, describing it as "completely unjust" and "prejudicial" to his libel action against the Daily Telegraph.
Party General secretary David Triesman said the suspension, effective immediately, would remain in place "pending internal party investigations".
Posted by: ColoradoConservative ||
05/06/2003 10:28 am ||
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#1
Suspended over a vat of snakes?
shouldn't bother George - professional courtesy, ya know?
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/06/2003 11:34 Comments ||
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#2
In a just universe, he'd be suspended, all right . . . from the gallows.
Posted by: Mike ||
05/06/2003 11:47 Comments ||
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Baghdad - In recent years, no Arab country has been as supportive and welcoming of Palestinians and their cause as Iraq. That is all over now.
"I was kicked out [of Palestine] with my mother and father 55 years ago - now I've been kicked out [of Iraq] with my wife and children," said Ahmed Kadoura, 60, sitting in the shade of one of many tents pitched on a soccer field in Baghdad. Like hundreds of other Palestinians in Iraq, Kadoura is facing the wrath of an Iraqi population that sees the Palestinians in Iraq as collaborators with the regime of Saddam Hussein.
"We're going in circles," said Kadoura, whose neighbor stabbed him twice with a long knife to encourage him to leave his Baghdad home. "It's pointless to stay in an Arab country."
Hussein created a militia devoted to liberating Jerusalem for the Arabs. He sent thousands of dollars to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers, allowed Palestinian militant groups to operate training camps in Iraq and recruited many for his security services, and he gave many ordinary Palestinians in Iraq free housing while paying their unwilling Iraqi landlords as little as $5 per year in compensatory rent. As the only Arab head of state to attack Israel in recent decades - in 1991 - he was a hero to many Palestinians. The moment Hussein fell from power, the Palestinians lost one of their most important and influential allies. The wider ramifications of this sudden loss of a major ally are still unclear, but it certainly will not strengthen the morale of Palestinians around the region. The loss also comes at a particularly sensitive time in the push for a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians.
The United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations last week presented their "road map" for a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, a proposal that is unacceptable to many Palestinians. With Iraqi support suddenly gone, Syria under pressure from the United States and many of the Arab states in the Persian Gulf allied firmly with the United States, an increasingly isolated Palestinian leadership could find itself under enormous pressure to accept a plan that so many of its people oppose.
It has been a stated aim of the architects of the Iraq war in the Bush administration to create a new political balance in the Middle East that would help bring about an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For many of those pro-Israel officials, weakening support for the Palestinians around the Middle East would likely be seen as a step in the right direction. It is too early to tell how Hussein's disappearance from the Middle East political scene will influence the Palestinian leadership but, for the Palestinians in Iraq, the consequences have been immediate. The most obvious result is the wide-scale eviction of Palestinian families from homes owned by Iraqis.
Peter Bouckaert, a senior researcher for Human Rights Watch, which is due to release a report on the Palestinian issue this week, said at least 320 Palestinians are now living in a refugee camp just inside neighboring Jordan. Another 350 are in tents pitched on a soccer field or in communal buildings in the Baladiyat neighborhood of Baghdad, where the Iraqi government built apartment blocks especially for Palestinians in the 1970s.
Bouckaert said the U.S. and British military, as occupying forces, are obliged under the terms of the Fourth Geneva Convention to provide protection for all of Iraq's residents, including the Palestinian minority. Finding themselves once again homeless, living in tents, is a source of particular pain for the Palestinians, especially for those old enough to have lived through the exodus of 1948.
Fifty-five years ago, 5-year-old Kadoura fled with his family from their home near Haifa as the nascent Israeli army fought to establish the state of Israel. After a hellish journey, the boy arrived in far-away Iraq and found himself living in a refugee tent. Three thousand Palestinians made it to Iraq after the 1948 war. There are no accurate statistics about the population now, but estimates vary between 35,000 and 70,000.
Now, Kadoura is nursing his chest wounds under canvas and wishing he could leave the country that has suddenly turned hostile.
Like all Palestinians in Hussein's Iraq, Kadoura found himself both courted by the government and manipulated by it. Until about a year ago, for example, it was illegal for Palestinians to own a home or a car. At the same time, the government allocated them housing and paid their reluctant landlords negligible rent. Kadoura lived in a house belonging to a Shia Iraqi, many of whom were persecuted under the Hussein regime. The government paid the owner $5 per year on Kadoura's behalf.
"Two days after the American forces entered Baghdad, he gave me three days to leave," said Kadoura, a former member of Hussein's ruling Baath party. After 15 years of being forced to accept the insulting rent, the landlord told Kadoura he'd better be gone or he and seven of his armed friends would be around to facilitate Kadoura's move. On the third day, as Kadoura packed, a Shia neighbor who no longer could hold back his resentment came to Kadoura's front gate with his ceremonial Shia knife. He "came with his big knife and kicked the gate and stabbed me twice," Kadoura said. "I don't think he has any humanity. I am an old man. I never did anyone any harm."
But the Iraqi man's words to Kadoura left little doubt about why he was treating his Palestinian neighbor to such a goodbye: "You have no protection now."
Posted by: Steve ||
05/06/2003 03:43 pm ||
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#1
Tough noogies, guys! What goes around comes around.
(I shouldn't feel this way, really, but I remember the Palestinians cheering on 9/11. Can't get the sympathy meter off zero, I really can't.)
Posted by: Mike ||
05/06/2003 16:06 Comments ||
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#2
The Israelis tried to get the local Arab population to stay in Israel, but their leaders told them they needed to leave. They promised them they would return "in a few days, once Israel is crushed". It's been 55 years, and the Arabs are still trying to crush Israel. The biggest share of guilt belongs to the Mufti of Jerusalem in 1948. The Paleostinians also deserve a large share of the blame, for never even attempting to integrate into local communities. The only difference between the Paleos and the other Arabs in the region is their place of birth. Now, only about one in ten was born in Palestine before 1948. They need to stop this constant delusion of "return" and get on with living.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
05/06/2003 18:56 Comments ||
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#3
Gee, I can't imagine why Iraqis would have a problem with a group of people who worshipped Saddam. Collaborators? Say it ain't so...I'd also hate to be a Syrian "volunteer" in Iraq these days...bad juju...
Posted by: R. McLeod ||
05/07/2003 3:59 Comments ||
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An audiotape has been handed to the Herald in Baghdad, with this tantalising claim: it is the voice of Saddam Hussein only two days ago, Ed O'Loughlin reports. He and bin Laden must have gone to the same DeVry class about making tapes after you're dead.
A tired-sounding voice calls on Iraq's people to stand together in a new underground war against the occupying forces.
"I don't want to talk in details about the occupation and why and how, and I am going to focus instead on how to face these invaders and kick them out from Iraq," it says, pausing to cough. Kick them out? Cough indeed.
"... It sounds as if we have to go back to the secret style of struggle that we began our life with. Through this secret means, I am talking to you from inside Great Iraq and I say to you, the main task for you, Arab and Kurd, Shia and Sunni, Muslim and Christian and the whole Iraqi people of all religions, your main task is to kick the enemy out from our country." But do it in secret, so no one will know they're gone!
"Certainly it's him," said a judge from a Baghdad criminal court, who asked not to be named. "I am 100 per cent certain. I deal with physical evidence all the time." Why, I still have the hands of the last robber who stood trial before me!
Two men gave the tape to the Herald on Monday, only after they failed to deliver it to correspondents for the Arab TV station Al-Jazeera. Thanks, but no thanks, guys. We've still got this backlog of fake bin Ladens to air. And May issweeps week, ya know.
The voice on the tape refers several times to the post-Baath occupation, and accuses US forces of looting the Iraqi National Museum.
It also refers to the Iraqi people celebrating Saddam's birthday. "You guys, you should've gotten me some new running shoes this year," he said.
The voice on the tape speaks of previous attempts to communicate from beyondwith the Iraqi people.
"I addressed some messages before, many messages before," it says. "Some of them were by my voice and some were addressed to the mass media, but we know and you know very well the mass media in the whole world is controlled by the Zionists, and especially by their headquarters in the White House." Like al-Jazerra and abu Dubai too?
Some, however, were sceptical.
#1
I saw one of saddams propaganda pieces in early03 which had him addressing his normal room ful of military types, during this particular call to action saddam extolled the virtus of staying in shpae through swimming in the euphrates river. Perhaps we should be looking along the river because it was clear Saddam would NEVER give up his daily swms.
IRNA -- The unprecedented persecution and killings of Iraqi Shiites during the barbarous and inhuman rule of Saddam and his henchmen clearly demonstrates the monstrous nature of the Baathist regime, condemned `Iran News' in its editorial on Tuesday.
All the non-Shiites slaughtered or maimed were a bad thing, too, I'd say...
Iraqi intelligence ministry Estekhbarat [Mukhabarat] records recently made public after the downfall of Saddam Hussein's regime revealed that 182 Shiite dissident clerics were murdered by the former Baath regime during a 19 year period. Apparently, these religious figures were either kidnapped or arrested without any prior warning and never heard from again, it wrote. This tragic news clearly indicates the true wickedness and monstrous nature of Saddam's brutal tyranny, the extent of which may never be fully comprehended it said.
Pretty simple: he killed anyone who disagreed with him, and some who did. What's so hard to comprehend about that? It's not like it's a new idea...
The wild celebrations by the Iraqi people after the fall of Saddam's statue in Baghdad showed how rigged the former Iraqi dictator's foreordained elections really were. He usually got a perfect 100 percent of all votes cast, it noted. The images of Saddam's terrifying prisons and the ledger of his unspeakable crimes documented by the Estekhbarat as well as other levers of his state terror apparatus make Saddam and his Tikrit clan of killers and torturers, if not unique, at least rare in the annals of human history as far as savagery and brutality. The intense persecution of a religious minority to the extent of the Iraqi Shiites during Saddam's barbarous rule is unprecedented since the Middle Ages in Europe, it said.
Well, actually there are worse parallels. Like in Europe. In the 1930s and 40s. But those were Jews and Gypsies and Slavs and other infidels and worthless folk, weren't they?
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
05/06/2003 12:59 pm ||
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#1
"unprecedented since the Middle Ages in Europe"
They forgot to mention that they still live in the Middle Ages. Or rather kicked their country back some 500 years or so.
Saddam Hussein's pistol incrusted with gold is on sale at one of Iraq's illegal markets for $500. Yeah, and I bet his cousin sells "authentic" Rolexes on a NYC sidewalk for $50.....
According to a RIA Novosti correspondent, the browning's hilt bears a remembrance inscription saying "To our favourite and highly pious leader Saddam Hussein on his birthday from sheikh Homeidi". The seller asserts that he bought the pistol for less than $200 and now he is going to sell it in order to provide for his living. After Saddam Hussein's regime collapsed, weapons markets in Iraq have become numerous. One of the biggest markets is located 120 kilometres south of Baghdad, on the road leading to the holy town of Shiites, An-Najaf, not far from the Iraqi town of El-Kifl. There one can buy almost everything - from a flare pistol to a 4-barrelled antiaircraft machine-gun. Why didn't I hear about this place BEFORE my Cinco de Mayo party? Damn!
The RIA Novosti correspondent who visited the market in El-Kifl has stated that the trade there is quite open and weapons are being sold by people of almost all ages, from 10-year-old children to elderly Iraqis. Female sellers are also quite frequent here. According to the sellers, Kalashnikov assault rifles produced in Russia, the Czech republic, Iraq and China are in great and stable demand. Their average price amounts to $50 /100,000 Iraqi dinars. Who says the Russians don't make anything anyone wants to buy?
There is also plenty of ammunition on the market. One cartridge costs 50 dinars or 2.5 cents. However, most customers buy boxes of cartridges. Duh....how can you have "happy fire" or "gun sex" with just one bullet?
"Possession of weapons is one of our nation's traditions, one of the signs of a tribe's power," sheikh Hamdan says. "When members of one tribe pay a visit to another tribe, they greet it with arms fire. The hosts salute their guests in the same way. It is our custom and we cannot ignore it." According to experts, uncontrolled trade of weapons threatens to turn the country into a "big armed gang band."
Posted by: Baba Yaga ||
05/06/2003 11:52 am ||
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Edited for brevity.
Lt. Col. Bill Dolan, commander of Tiger Squadron, 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, wanted to make a lasting first impression on the people of Husbayah, an outpost on the Syrian border likened by some U.S. soldiers to the frontier town Mos Eisley in the original Star Wars. So he sent Abrams tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles barreling down the main street on Sunday, as attack helicopters and two Navy F/A-18s flew low overhead. "Get your ass off the Arab Street and onto the Arab Sidewalk!"
"This is a border town," Dolan told his subordinate commanders before the operation. "Anybody who has been to Juarez or Tijuana knows what that's like. There are mugs, thugs and whackos we'll have to deal with."
Posted by: Dar ||
05/06/2003 11:38 am ||
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#1
What about the "girls"?
Posted by: john ||
05/06/2003 11:52 Comments ||
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Obi Wan: "Mos Eisley Spaceport, you won't find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious."
3rd ACR: "It's party time!!"
Posted by: Steve ||
05/06/2003 12:47 Comments ||
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Edited for brevity. An older article (23.April), but an interesting and insightful read nonetheless.
Saddam Husseinâs ear-amputation campaign went on for three days, May 17-19, 1994, in every city in Iraq. Some of the estimated 3,500 men who lost their ears are now telling their stories.
Most, like Ahmed Hussein, have no words in English, but they donât need them. Outside the HQ of the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit in An Nasiriya yesterday, Hussein only had to turn his head to show his profile, and utter a single word, âSaddam,â as he pointed to the stump where his right ear used to be. Hussein was among those arrested in a crackdown on Iraqi Army deserters in 1994; he had left his unit because, he said, âI didnât want to invade Kuwait again.â The same day that he was arrested, he was taken to an operating room in Saddam General Hospital in An Nasiriya and blindfolded. A surgeon gave him a local anesthetic, but it was still severely painful when he severed the ear nearly to the bone with a long-bladed scalpel.
Posted by: Dar ||
05/06/2003 10:23 am ||
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Edited for brevity.
U.S. military officials charged with rebuilding Iraq's emergency services say that hospitals in Baghdad are in far better shape than previous reports of massive looting had indicated. Far from having been stripped bare, the majority of hospitals have adequate equipment, and more crutches and medication have arrived than are needed, thanks to contributions from international humanitarian organizations. Officials also said that, according to private surveys, fewer than half of Baghdad's hospitals had been ransacked. One independent survey said seven of 27 hospitals examined had been looted and that many others were spared because they were guarded by American tanks. This good news must be suppressed--it's quagmire, I tell you! Quagmire!
Posted by: Dar ||
05/06/2003 08:51 am ||
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#1
Cenctom reports, among other things
Phone service restored between Basra and Amarah.
Status "Permissive" (safe enough for NGO's) in much of country. Plenty of NGO's going in.
Lots of work underway on restoring police. Police stations being repaired, police being recruited and vetted, police being trained, joint patrols started in various places.
Part of Baghad power grid up, other parts (at different voltage) to be up soon.
Food being delivered in places where its particularly short.
EFL
A vehicle found by Kurdish fighters last week in the northern Iraq city of Arbil may be a mobile weapons laboratory, U.S. officials said. Senior Defense officials told Fox News they are "confident" the vehicle was used to manufacture biological or chemical weapons agents. The vehicle contained fermenting tanks and dryers, such as those used to make the powder form of anthrax (search). Initial tests on the interior of the vehicle, which appeared to have been thoroughly cleaned, turned up negative results, but officials said tests were ongoing. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were expected to discuss the find Tuesday in a Pentagon briefing.
Posted by: Kalle (kafir forever) ||
05/06/2003 04:31 am ||
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Just wanted to let you kno how the "conscience of the Senate"- heh heh - felt about the Bush honoring of returning troops
WASHINGTON - Questioning the motives of a "desk-bound president who assumes the garb of a warrior," Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd on Tuesday reproached President Bush for flying onto an aircraft carrier last week to declare an end of major fighting in Iraq.
"I am loathed to think of an aircraft carrier being used as an advertising backdrop for a presidential political slogan, and yet that is what I saw," Byrd said on the Senate floor. "Through the eyeholes on my sheet"
Byrd, 85, of West Virginia, is the Senate's most senior member and was one of the most outspoken critics of the Iraq war. Known as a porker of the first order, the former klansman said he was OK with it if it were Clinton, or if the carrier was named after him (Byrd) as is most everything in West Va., including canned goods.
Dressed in a flight suit, Bush was flown onto the USS Abraham Lincoln on Thursday, his small S-3B Viking jet making a tailhook landing. The ship was near San Diego on its return from action in the Persian Gulf.
With the sea as his backdrop, Bush announced that the United States and its allies had prevailed against Saddam Hussein.
White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said Byrd's criticisms are "a disservice to the men and women of our military who deserved to be thanked in person." Any time Byrd speaks, breathes, and lives, is a disservice to our country
"Senator Byrd did not support the president at the beginning of this, and it is no surprise that he does not support the president at the end," Fleischer said. "Senator Byrd is a patriot to the confederate cause, but on this we disagree."
Byrd contrasted the speech with the "simple dignity" of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address during the Civil War.
"I do not begrudge his salute to America's warriors aboard the carrier Lincoln, for they have performed bravely, ... but I do question the motives of a desk-bound president who assumes the garb of a warrior for the purposes of a speech," he said.
He said American blood has been shed defending Bush's policies. "This is not some made-for-TV backdrop for a campaign commercial," he said. "Damn, I just wish we could have a Democrat president do that without booing or snickering"
"To me, it is an affront to the Americans killed or injured in Iraq for the president to exploit the trappings of war for the momentary spectacle of a speech," he said. "It should be the french-looking haughty Viet Nam vet, John Kerry"
Fleischer has rejected any suggestion that the landing was intended to provide campaign footage for Bush's re-election campaign.
Earlier Tuesday, he also said Bush decided to land on the carrier on a jet instead of his usual helicopter because the president wanted "to see an aircraft landing the same way that the pilots saw an aircraft landing. He wanted to see it as realistically as possible."
"Thank you Grand Kleagle, er, Senator Byrd, please wipe the drool off him, thanks"
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/06/2003 06:33 pm ||
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#1
Oops, looks like the last line is too inflammatory to be Ari, must've been me, and I hosed the highlighting.
Colorado Conservative? Looks like a three-fer for the other side today, Dasshole, Hart, and Byrd shooting holes in their own feet - should be a pleasant year
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/06/2003 18:48 Comments ||
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Robert Byrd (D-KKK), now there's someone that the Democratic Party can be proud of. Other than he's the king of pork and the entire state of West Virginia is named for him.
Dear Klucker: He's the Commander in Chief. That's a military rank. He's entitled.
#3
Old Patriot, if they ever put Robert Byrd into a home it will be the "Robert Byrd Home for the Aged"
Posted by: Someone who did NOT vote for William Proxmire ||
05/06/2003 19:51 Comments ||
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#4
You bastards. You have no understanding of Juche. The WV is required during the least of the times of Socialist Centred Massee Army First. So!!! Next Carrier be built in takemehomewestvirgins.
Gary Hart, the 1988 Democratic front-runner who was forced to abandon his presidential bid due to scandal, said Tuesday he will not try to make another run for the White House. "I've concluded that I do not have sufficient enthusiasm for the mechanical side of campaigning, (What do you suppose this refers to?)
the money, the media and the polling and so forth to go forward with a campaign," Hart said in a telephone interview. Basically, Hart knew he had a loser campaign and no chance to win. Even less than Sharpton.
As Hart emerged from private life this year, he has been frequently confronted by questions about his departure from the race in early 1987 because of his involvement with model Donna Rice. Asked recently, what effect the scandals of the 1990s, including President Clinton's involvement with intern Monica Lewinsky, would have on public interest in his 1987 exit from politics, Hart said simply: "I don't know." Hart and wife Lee remain married after 44 years, living in Colorado. In Troublesome Gulch - really!
Active in Democratic politics for more than three decades, Hart served as George McGovern's campaign manager in the 1972 Democratic nominee's unsuccessful bid for the presidency. This is why we know Hart is a loser at base.
#1
Does anybody else see a last minute "save the party" bid to get Hillary! or AlGore to run? The odds are enormous against either of them , but better than the current 9, which look like a Farm-League roster rather than major leaguers
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/06/2003 20:00 Comments ||
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IRNA -- A court in this northeastern Iranian city has sentenced 43 members of a gang, who married poor Iranian girls first and then forced them into prostitution in Pakistan, to a total of 281 years in prison and 222 lashes as well as cash fines.
Ummm... That's only about six and a half years apiece. And a bit over five lashes... For a bloodthirsty Islamic Republic, living in the grip of shariah, they don't appear to be using it where it'd do the most good. Seems to me, if you're gonna be against sin in all its forms, you might want to start with the worst ones...
The convicts, mostly Afghans who lived as refugees in Iran, took their victims among destitute and addicted families by tying the knot with their young daughters and then transferring them to brothels in Pakistan. "They would take them to Zabol or Zahedan (near the Pakistani border in southeast Iran) under the guise of visiting their relatives and out of the country to Pakistani cities for abuse," the public relations office of Khorassan Justice Department said Tuesday. The court further sentenced the convicts to paying six million rials and banned them from visiting the Islamic Republic again once they serve out their prison terms.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
05/06/2003 03:08 pm ||
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I wonder if anyone has ever done a study like this:
How do the sentences in Sharia courts compare for the following categories:
* Crimes against property (not including livestock)
* Crimes against livestock
* Crimes against women
My gut feeling is that crimes against women would generally produce the most lenient sentences. I read in one of Robert Conquest's books that it was axiomatic among Kremlinologists that any social ill that the Soviets accused the West of, they were most likely guilty of themselves. The Islamist press constantly accuses the West of exploiting its women. So if I apply Conquest's principle to the Islamists (Sunni and Shia), then this sort of abuse of women must be more widepread than we can imagine. Think about it. Drug traffickers paid addicts to sell their daughters into slavery. They then sell the girls into prostitution in another country. The punishment: a few lashes. What other horrors go on in the towns, clans, and families of Dar al Islam?
#2
tu3031: I don't know about the Koran or Hadith, but I read an article recently (I need to start saving the damn links)about the Shia practice of "temporary marriage." A Shi'ite can go to a whore, "marry" her, and then at the end of the lovin' state "I divorce you" four times and have committed no sin. Apparently, this is widely practiced in Qom because the seminarians aren't allowed to get really married until they earn their turban. I know, slippery slope is a logical fallacy, but it isn't far from a temporary marriage to the kind of behavior documented in Fred's article.
EFL
Ivory Coast's insurgents said government fighters attacked them on Monday, a day after a nationwide cease-fire took effect. That didn't take long
Rebel spokesman Antoine Beugre said government troops and foreign mercenaries attacked rebel positions in the villages of Zeale and Teapleu, near the country's western border with Liberia. Ivory Coast army spokesman Lt. Col. N'Goran Aka was unaware of any fighting, saying only: ``We've held those towns for a long time, so if there's fighting there, they must be attacking us.'' Give N'Goran a promotion for that one.
Rebel allegations couldn't be independently verified from the towns, which are in lawless borderlands that have seen shifting battle lines. The cease-fire accord, signed by rebel and army officials, took effect Sunday even as the sides traded charges of instigating fighting that continued until just before the midnight deadline. Beugre said the Liberian fighters, who have taken up arms with both rebel and loyalist forces in western Ivory Coast, have been cleared out of rebel-held zones. The government contends that renegade fighters still roam the lawless frontier. Officials have said that a joint military operation - including troops from government and rebel ranks as well as soldiers from the French army and a West African peacekeeping force - will soon be deployed to western Ivory Coast to enforce the cease-fire. Too many different factions for it to work
Posted by: Steve ||
05/06/2003 11:00 am ||
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Update with a few new facts:
China's president and his predecessor held an emotional meeting with six relatives of the 70 sailors killed in a mysterious Yellow Sea submarine accident disclosed only days ago, state television reported Monday. The Monday report by China Central Television said Hu and Jiang met with military experts to discuss possible causes for the deaths â indicating officials have not figured out what happened to the submarine, which was towed back to port after the accident. Foreign military analysts say it would be highly unusual for an accident to kill the entire crew but leave the submarine near enough to the surface to be recovered by China's military. Still don't know for sure if it was submerged or surfaced.
The analysts say that suggests the crew either suffocated or were poisoned. One theory is that sea water mixed with acid in the submarine's batteries, producing toxic chlorine gas. Foreign newspaper reports over the weekend, citing unidentified Chinese naval officials, said the disaster also might have involved a malfunction in a diesel engine used to power the submarine. In that scenario, a snorkel apparatus that feeds surface air to the engine while at a shallow depth might have become blocked, causing the engine to suck air out of the vessel. The reports, in The Boston Globe and Helsingin Sanomat of Finland, said the disaster occurred April 16 but was not detected until April 26. They said the submarine was on an exercise aimed at avoiding detection and had been under orders not to communicate with its base, and all the sailors were found at their posts. I have read a great deal on sub operations in WW2. When sea water leaked into the batteries and caused chlorine gas, the crew would don breathing gear, seal the battery compartment, and try to surface. It didn't happen so fast as to kill the crew at their stations. Sounds like more of a CO (carbon monoxide) leak from the exhaust or the engine sucked the oxygen out of the boat due to a defective snorkel.
Posted by: Steve ||
05/06/2003 09:03 am ||
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Chlorine is readily apparent and unmistakeable. The crew would have surely reacted. Carbon monoxide is odorless -- a few on the crew may have gotten headaches before they passed out.
Is there any possibility that this boat would be carrying nerve gas weapons? Can it fire missiles?
Posted by: Tom ||
05/06/2003 9:43 Comments ||
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Dar---The ex-submariner was probably saying is that the engines drew combustion air from the hull since the snorkel was shut down. They pulled a good vacuum and the crew died like dogs in a vacuum chamber at the animal shelter. It was not pretty.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
05/06/2003 12:57 Comments ||
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I think it refers to 6 inches of mercury. Normal atmospheric pressure is 30" of mercury.
#4
Thanks, all! I checked on some keywords on Google after reading all this to get more info and have found some links to further enlighten myself. Sounds like rapid depressurization like this only allows about 10-15 seconds of consciousness, so if that was the situation these guys didn't have very long to react.
Posted by: Dar ||
05/06/2003 13:46 Comments ||
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Boy! Us submariners are a unique crowd. When we hear about these incidents, all we want to do is try to figure out what went wrong and where the material/maintenace/training deficiency is.
Most likely ORSE boards will now add contaminated emergency air systems as anomalies to drills.
If anyone hears anything about the maintenance records on the sub, make sure you post 'em.
United Nations officials overseeing sanctions against Liberia have accused Guinea - a member of the UN Security Council - of supplying weapons to Liberian rebels. Tap..tap..nope
Human rights groups argue that this illustrates the regional dimension of the conflict in West Africa and the need for the Security Council to consider extending its arms embargo to Liberia's neighbouring countries. The Security Council is expected to extend the arms ban on Liberia for a further 12 months later on Tuesday. Yeah, that'll help.
Done wonders so far...
Security Council members have been presented with a report that portrays the West African region containing Liberia and surrounding countries as an unstable and dangerous area where groups of young men have become accustomed to a life of chaos, banditry and lawlessness. That discription covers 90% of the continent.
Although Liberia is the focus of existing UN sanctions, the report is highly critical of neighbouring countries for the support and assistance they provide to various rebel groups. It names Guinea as a country that has violated the existing UN arms embargo on Liberia by supplying weapons and military assistance to the rebel group Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (Lurd). Diplomatic sources say pressure is being put on the Guinean Government to end its support for a rebel group that is contributing to instability in the region, but it is unlikely to be named explicitly in a new UN resolution that extends the sanctions regime against Liberia for another 12 months. Lobby groups like the New York-based Human Rights Watch say the failure of the UN Security Council to appreciate the regional dimension of the conflict in West Africa will undermine the effectiveness of the new resolution. They say it still portrays Monrovia as the root of all evil in the region at a time when many of Liberia's close neighbours go unpunished despite clear evidence of their support for Liberian rebel groups. So, what else is new?
Actually, I'm on Guinea's side in this one, though I'm obliged to piously deny it. With that out of the way, LURD is preferable to Charles Taylor, and I say that without knowing anything about what they stand for.
Posted by: Steve ||
05/06/2003 07:52 am ||
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Even Viagra won't help the UN at this point. Not only is it impotent, but everyone expects it to be and acts accordingly.
#2
West Africa? Sounds like a great spot for the French to redeem their national honor and bring peace and prosperity to the victims of war and oppression...just look at the great start they've made in Sierra Leone!
Posted by: R. McLeod ||
05/07/2003 3:20 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
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.
