Hi there, !
Today Sun 04/04/2004 Sat 04/03/2004 Fri 04/02/2004 Thu 04/01/2004 Wed 03/31/2004 Tue 03/30/2004 Mon 03/29/2004 Archives
Rantburg
531688 articles and 1855967 comments are archived on Rantburg.

Today: 66 articles and 455 comments as of 11:10.
Post a news link    Post your own article   
Area: WoT Background                   
Hit on Jamali thwarted?
Today's Headlines
Headline Comments [Views]
Page 1: WoT Operations
0 [] 
10 00:00 Jen [] 
0 [] 
7 00:00 JJ TROLL [] 
10 00:00 Mark O [] 
9 00:00 Fred TROLL [1] 
5 00:00 Patrick TROLL [1] 
5 00:00 Bomb-a-rama [] 
0 [] 
5 00:00 Daniel King [] 
6 00:00 Zenster [] 
8 00:00 Jen [] 
9 00:00 Traveller [] 
2 00:00 .com [] 
39 00:00 ruprecht [] 
11 00:00 Jake TROLL [1] 
2 00:00 Shipman [] 
4 00:00 Joe TROLL [] 
0 [] 
0 [] 
0 [] 
0 [] 
0 [] 
1 00:00 smokeysinse [] 
25 00:00 GK [] 
2 00:00 HalfEmpty [] 
17 00:00 Fred TROLL [] 
0 [] 
4 00:00 GJ TROLL [] 
8 00:00 Steve TROLL [] 
0 [] 
12 00:00 Jackson TROLL [] 
6 00:00 Fred TROLL [] 
8 00:00 German TROLL [] 
2 00:00 Chechen TROLL [] 
13 00:00 MI6 TROLL [] 
0 [] 
13 00:00 Joe TROLL [] 
6 00:00 Canadian TROLL [] 
2 00:00 Free Speech Enforcer TROLL [] 
0 [] 
0 [] 
3 00:00 Ptah [] 
0 [] 
0 [] 
17 00:00 Anonymous4030 [] 
Page 2: WoT Background
19 00:00 Jackson TROLL []
6 00:00 Mark O []
8 00:00 Mr. No Nuttin []
5 00:00 OldSpook []
7 00:00 Phil B []
1 00:00 .com []
7 00:00 Pappy []
18 00:00 Pappy []
19 00:00 Alaska Paul []
8 00:00 Alex [1]
1 00:00 .com []
12 00:00 .com []
7 00:00 Kerry TROLL []
6 00:00 Jim TROLL []
10 00:00 Jones TROLL []
6 00:00 Jason TROLL []
9 00:00 Jack Deth []
21 00:00 Misha TROLL []
12 00:00 Opec TROLL []
5 00:00 Murray TROLL []
Britain
Any UK Moslem Who Co-Operates With UK Authorities Against Other Moslems Is an Apostate
Muslims cannot co-operate with local authorities against other members of the faith, the outspoken leader of an Islamic group has said. Sheikh Omar Bakri Muhammad was reacting to a call from the Muslim Council of Britain for the community to play its part in the fight against terrorism, following the anti-terrorism raids earlier this week in which eight men were arrested. ... Sheikh Omar told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: "Muslims have a unique way of life. Co-operating with the authorities against any other Muslims, that is an act of apostasy in Islam.
"We can do anything we want. Nobody can tell us what to do except us, and we won't. We're different from everybody because we belong to the Master Religion."
"Having said that, Muslims in Britain have the right to defend themselves, but without the use of violence. They can gather together, speak with the imams. The imams themselves should lecture the Muslim community, not the Muslim Council of Britain who are all of them a bunch of seculars." Sheikh Omar complained that the media was "demonising" the Muslim community in Britain, and that a "cycle of violence" has been created by both terrorists and the British and American response. ....
Posted by: Mike Sylwester || 04/01/2004 7:43:03 PM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Arrest this man and throw him in jail for encitement and treason.
Posted by: Ptah || 04/01/2004 19:53 Comments || Top||

#2  Isn't that nice the BBC gave him a soapbox too?
Posted by: Frank G || 04/01/2004 19:54 Comments || Top||

#3  Well, for better or for worse, Sheikh Omar Bakri Muhammad has set the battle lines. On BBC radio he has documented that he will not cooperate with authorities in certain instances. The govt needs to act on this incitment speech. I do not know if he is a British subject (citizen) but if he is not, he needs to be shown the door. The govt cannot back down on this. It is a fundamental issue, and like the scarf issue in France, it is a calculated step by the Islamists to establish Sharia in their ghettos neighborhoods, which will lead to Britishstan in the future, if left unchecked.
Posted by: Alaska Paul || 04/01/2004 21:02 Comments || Top||

#4  The Imams ARE the cause of that 'Cycle of Violence (tm)'... I think Al-Beeb did us a favour; give these guys enough rope so that they hang themselves...
Posted by: steve d. || 04/01/2004 21:07 Comments || Top||

#5  Sheikh Omar Bakri Muhammad

Sorry to digress, but:

Kill. Him. Now.
Posted by: Raj || 04/01/2004 21:23 Comments || Top||

#6  Sheikh Omar claims the "media" is "demonizing the Muslims? That's such BS. The bulk of mainstream media covers for the Muslims who do a very efficient job of demonizing themselves. Exhibit A: witness Sheikh Omar's comments to the BBC.
Posted by: Mark || 04/01/2004 21:31 Comments || Top||

#7  This is why I said, several months ago, that Islam is incompatible with freedom. Freedom means the right to say "NO". Islam gives you no such right - it's either Islam or death. The choice is clear: destroy Islam or give up all freedom. I will NOT surrender.

KILL

THEM

ALL

NOW.
Posted by: Old Patriot || 04/01/2004 21:48 Comments || Top||

#8  Any trained sharpshooters want to practice on this Bakri guy?
Posted by: Bomb-a-rama || 04/01/2004 22:25 Comments || Top||

#9  a "cycle of violence" has been created by both terrorists and the British and American response. ....

There's that damned "cycle of violence" again. Because he names three parties, doesn't that really make it a tri-cycle?

Obviously, to him, it's wrong because there's a response. Play the good dhimmi, and the cycle goes away. Bastard.
Posted by: Pappy || 04/01/2004 23:01 Comments || Top||

#10  Geeze:

All the Kill Him/Them Now posts...

Hell, me, I'd take his word for it and start deporting anyone who agrees.

Take this recent business where the same imams are complaining about the Brit version of the Pledge of Allegiance (to country and Queen). You don't like it? You don't have to be here.

It's simple; it's non-discriminatory (it doesn't care if you're green, yellow, black, or white so long as you agree); and it cuts to the chase... Are you willing to state your allegiance, and risk the consequences of breaking them, or are you just a freeloader?

If more people were presented with that sort of "black-and-white" option, I think you might see some push-back from the legendary "moderate Muslim" community against the extremists.

But until it becomes an issue that impacts on people's livelihoods, then everyone (ourselves included), will just slough it off.
Posted by: Mark O || 04/01/2004 23:12 Comments || Top||


Would-be London boomers' e-mail trail leads back to Pakistan
I am surprised 'most to death...
Police computer experts were last night trawling through email records from a West Sussex internet cafe as the intelligence agencies tried to establish links between eight UK terror suspects and senior militants in Pakistan. As detectives continued to question the young men suspected of plotting a major bomb attack in Britain, MI5 and MI6 continued their investigations into influential foreign figures who might have been advising them.

The extension came as a man was charged in Canada with helping terrorist activity in London after being arrested on Monday. Mohammed Momin Khawaja, 29, a software developer, appeared in an Ottawa court in shackles and a bullet-proof vest. Mr Khawaja, a Canadian of Pakistani descent, is alleged to have knowingly participated in or contributed to the activities of a terrorist group, and knowingly facilitated a terrorist activity. The offences allegedly took place "on or between November 10 2003 and March 29 2004 at or near the city of Ottawa and at or near the city of London." Mr Khawaja said he had recently travelled to London to meet a prospective bride. His brother, Qasim, insisted he was innocent, adding: "They are looking for something that does not exist. They want to fabricate or create it somehow."

The British detainees being questioned in London were born and brought up in England, but seven are of Pakistani descent, and counter-terrorist sources are confident that they will unearth international connections. "More will surface on the external aspects [of the alleged bomb plot]," a source familiar with the operation said. Officials made it clear that Pakistan was in their sights. Anti-terrorist officers think that some of the suspects may have sent and received emails from associates and mentors, who advised them on waging "holy war" on Britain. There is no suggestion that the proprietor of the internet cafe was aware of this. Several of the suspects had visited Pakistan and at least one is thought to have undergone paramilitary training in a terrorist camp there.

One is 32 years old, but the others are all under 22 - three of them teenagers. This could indicate a worrying trend of extreme militancy among young British Muslims attracted to ideology-driven violence. They are not particularly religious, intelligence sources say, and are not directly linked to known al-Qaida figures. They are, however, inspired by al-Qaida anti-western ideology, and perhaps motivated by the invasion of Iraq and the American-backed campaign against al-Qaida's leaders and their sympathisers in north-western Pakistan. One source familiar with the operation summed up the fears, albeit in crude terms. "It is one thing having foreigners doing things against us", he said "but to have people born and bred and raised in the UK allegedly engaged in preparing a terrorist act is pretty shocking."

Police and MI5 agents had been secretly monitoring the suspects for weeks, and intercepted communications form a crucial part of the inquiry. There are fears that other, older suspects might have evaded arrest. "This is an intelligence-led investigation, not a fishing expedition," a senior police source said. "There is a degree of concern over the ages of those arrested. But there has been a long covert operation and officers are confident that now is the time to 'go live.'"

Ansar Khan, Ahmad's father, a taxi driver based at Gatwick airport, admitted that his nephew Omar had visited the Pakistan border, but denied that he had any involvement with al-Qaida. He said the family had flown out and brought him home after about six weeks. "My cousins are intelligence officers in the Pakistan army and they helped us find him," he said. He also claimed that MI5 agents had approached Omar and Shujah on two occasions and told them they should go to Pakistan. But police and security sources denied this.

Omar Bakri Mohammed, leader of al-Muhajiroun, a radical Muslim organisation, said he recognised "three or four" of the names of those arrested as former members, including Omar Khyam. In 2000 the 40-strong Crawley group dissociated itself from al-Muhajiroun, saying it was not radical enough, he claimed. Mr Bakri Mohammed said he did not believe the young men had been involved in terrorist activity, but admitted that they had disagreed with his view that Muslims were under a "covenant of security" in the UK, and that any act of terror carried out on British soil would be against the Koran.
That's because Bakri et al wants to keep their front orgs up and running in the UK.
Posted by: Dan Darling || 04/01/2004 1:06:15 AM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1 
Would-be London boomers' e-mail trail leads back to Pakistan
Tap, tap ... I gotta take my surprise meter in for service; it just won't budge off zero.

"It is one thing having foreigners doing things against us", he said "but to have people born and bred and raised in the UK allegedly engaged in preparing a terrorist act is pretty shocking."
Not as shocking as your naivete, buddy.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut || 04/01/2004 1:21 Comments || Top||

#2  Ansar Khan, Ahmad's father, a taxi driver.

You talking about me, Yo you talking about me, PUNK!
Posted by: Lucky || 04/01/2004 1:24 Comments || Top||

#3  Here we have 2 clearly defined Rules O' Thumb for Profiling Who Be An Asshat:
1) Muslims as Muslims first (and always, LH).
2) Families are nests, breeding grounds, if one is rotten - the whole lot is rotten.

And if such info is available for parsing:
If they have any Goddamned relatives in Asshatistan, what sort are they? Refer to Rule #2 above for classification and sorting. Now SORT.
Posted by: .com || 04/01/2004 1:55 Comments || Top||

#4  the 40-strong Crawley group dissociated itself from al-Muhajiroun, saying it was not radical enough, he claimed

Blimey - thought that was as radical as they could get?
Posted by: Howard UK || 04/01/2004 7:00 Comments || Top||

#5  So the e-mail trailed back to noble Pakistan, big deal. I expect he just needed some legal advice.
Posted by: Abu Divorce Lawyer || 04/01/2004 8:01 Comments || Top||

#6  [Troll droppings deleted]
Posted by: Murray TROLL || 04/01/2004 8:08 Comments || Top||

#7  Dot com

I KNOW that MANY muslims see themselves as muslims first. This does not prove that either ALL or even MOST do.

And it does not FOLLOW that someone who sees themselves as a muslim first necessarily wants to go around booming things.

I got news for you dot com - i know people who think of themselves as Jews first. aside from not proving the same about ALL jews, it is also the case that these people dont go around booming non-Jews. In fact they are MORE likely to be concerned about their security in a non-Jewish world, and to want to pressure their fellow Jews to "make nice" to avoid antisemitism. I suspect that at least a few Jews who opposed the Iraq war fall in this category. If you havent grown up where people see a newspaper headline and ask "is it good for the Jews?" you dont know what i mean.

I assume plenty of muslims get up and see a headline of a terror bombing, and their first thought is "oh, shit, like this is the last thing we needed!" IE theyre thinking of their interests as MUSLIMS, not as good patriots, but this doesnt make them real keen on terror bombings.

I will ALWAYS treat individuals as individuals. No collective guilt - not for muslims, not for Jews, not for Christian fundamentalists, not for White South Africans, not for Germans, not for Arabs, not for Jewish settlers on the West Bank, not for Pashtuns, not for Poles, not for Serbs, not for Turks, not for Palestinians, not for capitalists.

Its not what you ARE, its what you DO.

In that I am proudly a liberal, in the broadest sense, even if i vote for Dubya this November.
Posted by: Liberalhawk || 04/01/2004 11:21 Comments || Top||

#8  Several of the suspects had visited Pakistan and at least one is thought to have undergone paramilitary training in a terrorist camp there.

Imagine that - a terrorist camp in Pakistan.
Posted by: Bomb-a-rama || 04/01/2004 11:50 Comments || Top||

#9  I will ALWAYS treat individuals as individuals. No collective guilt - not for muslims, not for Jews, not for Christian fundamentalists, not for White South Africans, not for Germans, not for Arabs, not for Jewish settlers on the West Bank, not for Pashtuns, not for Poles, not for Serbs, not for Turks, not for Palestinians, not for capitalists.

Its not what you ARE, its what you DO.


Totally agree with you, LiberalHawk.

People who identify strongly with a group gets their attitude of how to react if a member of the group goes astray from the group itself, and is a good way to judge them. In my church, the reaction to an apostate is to pray for them. In Islam, it's a death sentance. Go figure why the lefty libs think christians are the bigger threat than Muslims...
Posted by: Ptah || 04/01/2004 12:53 Comments || Top||

#10  LH - Ptah - Fine, boys. What I said was the profiling assumtion must be to check them out from stem to stern. We have have a shitload of stories right here on RB where the entire family was, indeed, rotten - especially when the father of the RoP Mooslim Clan is rotten. Remember? Am I wrong? So I am saying check them out and make your assumptions based upon caution. I did not say shoot them all, now did I?

I am soooooo glad you guys are soooooo wonderful and soooooo just. Congrats. No kidding. What you say means that in everyday life, I would find you guys to be upstanding and nice guys. That's cool as hell. On your own time and in your own lives that is peachy. B. U. T. ... If you are a security official of a Gov't, however, in that capacity as a security official I (and an untold number of terrorism victims around the world) would much prefer you lose your halo and get suspicious as hell. Okay - are you ready? If nothing else, do it for the children, heh. And don't forget the puppies and baby ducks, too. Grins & Regards to you both.
Posted by: .com || 04/01/2004 13:34 Comments || Top||

#11  I liked .com's post. Funny, and unfortunately more true than not, as a general observation. (And I'm sure .com is not advocating the wholesale "booming" of anyone who's a Moslem).

While I appreciate where you're coming from, Liberalhawk, the fact is, most Moslems consider being a Moslem a kind of "team sport" thing. Really. And they're very loyal "fans" in that regard. You would had to have been around a lot of them to understand this.

The report says the boys in London weren't regarded as "particularly religious." As Moslems, they don't have to be religious to participate as "Moslems." As long as you're a "Moslem", you're included. See, in their thinking as Moslems, Moslems are Moslems first--not UK citizens first. Of course there are exceptions, thank goodness, but it is nevertheless an identifiable cultural norm--and I've seen it the same across all nationalities. It is interesting that the more intelligent and pro-social Moslems generally tend to identify with their country of origin first. Their "Moslemness" takes a clear second place in comparison.

I've also noticed that, in general, Moslems enjoy intrigue immensely--again, another cultural norm. Gets them all juiced up. (The boy's father "also claimed that MI5 agents had approached Omar and Shujah on two occasions and told them they should go to Pakistan." Right. Sure they did. Makes a good story, though, huh?) These kinds of crazy claims are probably why so many young men are joining the ranks. All of a sudden they get to feel very important--like they can make a diference. (The father's silly accusation also kind of proved .com's point #2, in a way.)

So, keep on profiling, .com. You're gonna be right more than you're gonna be wrong. And for any and all the nice-people Moslems--keep a light on.


Posted by: ex-lib || 04/01/2004 15:47 Comments || Top||

#12  LH:
Right on: that was a very fine statement as well as a very American sentiment. Lets all keep our minds, as well as our eyes, open when it comes to our fellow citizens.
Posted by: Secret Master || 04/01/2004 19:54 Comments || Top||

#13  Fred Pruitt censors truth while Americans die in Iraq on basis of lies.
Posted by: MI6 TROLL || 04/01/2004 8:08 Comments || Top||


UK Muslim leaders weigh in
BRITISH Muslim leaders yesterday spoke out in the wake of the Madrid bombings and the police operation to foil an al-Qaeda attack in Britain, insisting that it was the responsibility of everyone in their communities to help to thwart terrorist activities. They seized the initiative in an attempt to forestall any backlash against the Muslim community, stressing that they had already been active in supporting the police and the security services in their campaign against terrorists believed to be at large in Britain.

An emergency meeting last Friday of the national leadership of the Muslim Council agreed to appeal to the two million-strong Muslim population by way of a letter to imams, chairmen and secretaries of the country’s mosques. But Inayat Bunglawala, from the Muslim Council, was keen to stress that Muslim leaders had already been working with police before Monday’s raids. "We co-operate fully with the police. If there was a burglary or a murder we knew about, we would be expected to inform the police, and similarly when it comes to terror or suspected terror or people who are engaged in terror, the Muslim community has been very forthcoming indeed. If someone is involved in criminal activity it is the duty of all Muslims and non-Muslims to let the police know and let them decide whether there is a real danger or not."

He said ordinary law-abiding Muslims were frustrated by the attention focused on a small minority. "There is exasperation at these groups, that they have managed to monopolise almost all coverage of Islam to the detriment of ordinary Muslims," he said. "We have laws in this country, and if people are engaged in wrongdoing then the police arrest them and charge them. There is no sympathy for anyone engaged in that kind of activity. I have no doubt that the Muslim community will co-operate if they believe an act of terror is being planned or designed." But he said the government also had a responsibility not to engage in policies which would breed terrorists. "We were very vocal opponents of the war in Iraq, we believed that the Iraq war would make our security worse, and some humility would be welcome from our politicians to recognise the mistakes they made," he said.

Muhammed Tufail Shaheen, the president of Glasgow Central Mosque, said it was up to the parents of young Muslims to exert influence over their children, and he said anyone who suspected that a member of the community was involved in terrorist activity should tip off the police. "If there is any rogue or criminal, or they are doing harm to society, or doing something ugly like this we have to support the police," he said. He added that the mosque dealt with the police on a regular basis. "In every community you will see some people go bad, but if there are any boys who are influenced by somebody, then the parents will be now told to take extra care. We have to make sure this does not happen here." If a boy was away from his home and his parents did not know the reasons why, they should find out where he had been and who he was with," Mr Shaheen said. "Our message to everybody is to make sure the boys and girls are properly controlled. If there is any doubt, people will say to the police, ‘Check this man, he is not right’. That is what we should be doing."

Meanwhile, Austria’s foreign ministry distanced itself from an article on its website describing Muslims as generally violent and united in seeking the overthrow of Western society.
Posted by: Dan Darling || 04/01/2004 1:01:40 AM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Hopefully, they're on the level.
Posted by: ex-lib || 04/01/2004 1:14 Comments || Top||

#2  Nice long time gap between Madrid and the raids bagging the explosives... so they speak out within 2 days - AFTER the raids? Right. Don't give them any credit for they have done nothing useful - they're just peddling as fast as they can now that the gig is up in the UK. If they were REALLY serious, if they didn't support the asshats, they would've spoken long long long before now. Shoulda, coulda, woulda, pfeh. Bollocks. Tag 'em and Bag 'em in Whack-a-Mole style, UK. Get hard - or get creamed.
Posted by: .com || 04/01/2004 1:49 Comments || Top||

#3  Funny how they always react, late, defensively. They never pro-act, loud, stong or often.

They better start getting onto the front foot as a matter of habit and necessity or the backlash will be loud, strong, often and habitual.
Posted by: Michael Gill || 04/01/2004 2:02 Comments || Top||

#4  One should remember that we can only see what we can see. That in this war, there is a lot going on underground, out of sight that we can't see, nor should, as that might expose investigations and operations to the bad guys.

The Muslim community is speaking publically now. How much help they have been giving the police underground, privately, covertly, we may never know.
Posted by: Ben || 04/01/2004 3:36 Comments || Top||

#5  hmm, late or not, it's a good message they are giving to the Muslim community.
Posted by: lyot || 04/01/2004 3:39 Comments || Top||

#6  A step in the right direction at least. Not a very big one, but better then the silence we've had up 'til now.
Posted by: Jarhead || 04/01/2004 7:44 Comments || Top||

#7  [Troll droppings deleted]
Posted by: Murray TROLL || 04/01/2004 8:10 Comments || Top||

#8  it never fails, just when you think the Moslems might have their head on straight you get this line,

"..But he said the government also had a responsibility not to engage in policies which would breed terrorists.."
Posted by: mhw || 04/01/2004 8:22 Comments || Top||

#9  When in Rome...
Posted by: Howard UK || 04/01/2004 9:42 Comments || Top||

#10  Note the careful weasel wording: "...we would be expected to inform police..." and "...I have no doubt that Muslims...". All speculative, nothing authoritative or definite.
Posted by: mjh || 04/01/2004 9:51 Comments || Top||

#11  "We have laws in this country, and if people are engaged in wrongdoing then the police arrest them and charge them. There is no sympathy for anyone engaged in that kind of activity. I have no doubt that the Muslim community will co-operate if they believe an act of terror is being planned or designed."

But he said the government also had a responsibility not to engage in policies which would breed terrorists.


There it is - the "yes, but..." tack.

For some, not much has changed.
Posted by: Bomb-a-rama || 04/01/2004 11:55 Comments || Top||

#12  Yes, I noticed the long time gap too, .com.
Posted by: Ptah || 04/01/2004 12:55 Comments || Top||

#13  Fred Pruitt censors truth while Americans die in Iraq on basis of lies.
Posted by: Joe TROLL || 04/01/2004 8:10 Comments || Top||


Down Under
Secret bunkers held chemical weapons, says Iraqi exile
Bullsh*t probably. But how hard would it be to check it out?
A scientist describes Saddam’s weapons and stealth technology programs, reports Russell Skelton.

For seven years, before he was tortured and sentenced to death, Rashid (not his real name) worked at the top of Iraq’s scientific establishment. He says he regularly met Saddam Hussein and his cousin and strongman deputy prime minister Abdul Tawab Huweish. After the Gulf War he was put in charge of a taskforce code named "Al Babel" to develop stealth technology to make aircraft and missiles undetectable on radar.

Rashid, who now lives in Melbourne, also claims to have had access as a trusted insider to secret underground bunkers where chemical weapons were stored. "Saddam gave me access to everything, he was so desperate to perfect the stealth technology," he says.

Now Rashid’s great fear is that Saddam loyalists still active in postwar Iraq may get to the chemicals and weapons he saw hidden away before fleeing for his life.

"If those weapons still exist, the worry is that they will be used against the Iraqi people, the US forces or even sold off to al-Qaeda. Maybe those weapons no longer exist, but I find it hard to believe they could disappear so easily," he says.

Rashid’s days of working at the top came to an abrupt end in 1998 when he was arrested with a group of other scientists and army officers on charges of plotting to remove Saddam. He was taken to a high-security jail in the centre of Baghdad, run by the Mukhabarat (secret police), where he was tortured for three weeks, suffering severe spinal injuries.

Rashid was then transferred to the Abu Ghraib jail outside Baghdad for execution. "Each morning prisoners were executed. Some were shot and some were hung. I could see the executions from my cell window. You lived in a constant state of terror because you never knew who was next."

Rashid says he escaped when a high-ranking military officer and close friend bribed the guards to swap his file with that of an executed prisoner. "On visiting day I just walked out. Everything had been arranged; I had false travel documents that got me and my family across the border to Syria," he says.

Rashid’s problems did not end there. The Iraqi secret police came looking for him at Damascus University where he taught physics part time, and he fled to Melbourne on an Emirates flight. He says he left his wife and family behind because the family had money to buy only a single ticket and at that stage he was the one whose life was in immediate danger.

Rashid has told The Age he knows of five secret storage bunkers around Baghdad, Basra and Tikrit, three of which he visited regularly as a top scientist and senior employee of Iraq’s now defunct Atomic Energy Commission.

One, he says, was under an island in the Tigris River near Saddam University. Another was beneath the house of one of Saddam’s cousins, and reached by a tunnel with a hidden entrance 800 metres away.

He described the bunkers as being built 15 metres underground, of reinforced concrete, and multi-storeyed. "Between these layers, pipes would rise up, through the building above to provide access for ventilation.

"The lethal chemicals were stored in drums and the bunkers were air-conditioned. But there were also artillery shells and 122-millimetre rockets armed with chemicals."

He says the sites had been built using foreign construction companies, including a company from China, and that nobody was allowed to approach without authorisation and extensive ID checks by the Special Republican Guard.

Rashid says meeting Saddam was always a bizarre experience. "Suddenly his people would appear unannounced. They would take you to a location and examine you carefully: mouth, hands, eyes and ears. Then you would be taken to another place and checked again. This could happen up to three times. Finally he would come into the room."

Rashid says Saddam was moody but was always on top of what was discussed, and read all scientific reports sent to him. "Nothing ever happened unless he approved it. That included the purchase of special equipment, sending people overseas to be trained. If you told him a project would take six months to complete, he would want it in four months."

After arriving in Australia, Rashid was issued with a temporary protection visa.

Even though Rashid’s wife and four children have been processed and found to be refugees by the UNHCR in Syria, they remain stranded there. Australia’s immigration laws prevent TPV holders access to family reunion and they have not been issued with a visa.

Although Rashid is known to authorities in Australia, he asked that his real name not be published, to protect him and his family from Saddam loyalists still active in Iraqi communities in and outside Australia.

"It’s still too dangerous for us to speak out; I don’t know who to trust. There are former army officers living in Australia who were close to Saddam," he says.

Posted by: tipper || 04/01/2004 10:26:09 PM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  [Troll droppings deleted]
Posted by: JJ TROLL || 04/01/2004 22:48 Comments || Top||

#2  Huh? JJ -- have another Scotch, then, maybe I can understand you.....
Posted by: Sherry || 04/01/2004 23:05 Comments || Top||





#7  Fred Pruitt censors truth while Americans die in Iraq on basis of lies.
Posted by: JJ TROLL || 04/01/2004 22:48 Comments || Top||


Europe
Letter bombs intercepted in Spain
Three letter bombs addressed to media outlets in Madrid have been intercepted at a postal sorting office in northern Spain, police said. They say police experts defused at least two of the three devices, which were set to explode when opened. The letters were found at the postal centre in Zaragoza, which was evacuated following the alert. The discovery comes almost three weeks after the 11 March train bombings in Madrid, in which 190 people died. The letter bombs were addressed to the newspaper La Razon, the radio station Cope and Antena 3 television, Spanish state radio said.
So much for the "We won't bomb you anymore as long as you get your troops out of Iraq, Zappy".
Posted by: Lux || 04/01/2004 2:10:49 PM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Not necessarily. If their postal service is like ours, they could have been mailed before the 11th.
Posted by: Jackal || 04/01/2004 16:09 Comments || Top||

#2  Anyone know what kind of outlets these are - PP, Socialist, mixed bag or what?
Posted by: VAMark || 04/01/2004 16:41 Comments || Top||

#3  Ahhh yes,Zappy.
So now it begins.
You've shown the terrorist the color of your spine.Now your people will suffer.
Posted by: Raptor || 04/01/2004 17:06 Comments || Top||

#4  I guess the terrorists want more Danegeld
Posted by: Chemist || 04/01/2004 17:35 Comments || Top||

#5  They could argue the technicality that the troops aren't out yet, or that the promise isn't iron-clad, or that they want them out NOW.
Posted by: Ptah || 04/01/2004 19:52 Comments || Top||

#6  Sadly, Spain doesn't seem to realize that unless all your women are wearing burkhas and the menfolk are crammed into a local mosque, those bombs are just going to keep on coming. Buy all the time you want with whatever sort of roll-over belly up tactics, all it does is put you a little lower on the list of targets. Once those have been bombed, you're back in the crosshairs.

It should be obvious by now that Islamic fanatics could give a shit who helped them five minutes ago. If they've cleared their plate, even the most generous non-Muslim patrons instantly become the next target. Israel had to learn this the hard way with Hamas, as did America with bin Laden.
Posted by: Zenster || 04/02/2004 0:36 Comments || Top||


3/11 planned in 2003
A Tunisian man wanted as a ringleader in the Madrid train bombings began agitating for "jihad" (holy war) in Madrid in mid-2003 if not earlier, according to arrest warrants released on Thursday. The Tunisian, Serhane ben Abdelmajid Farkhet, 35, was identified as the "personal leader and coordinator" of the group implicated in the March 11 attack, which killed 191 people three days before Spain's general election, the warrants said. Fakhet "not only was the energising force for the awareness campaign for the jihad ... but also with specific intent (since the middle of 2003 at least) for the preparation of a violent act in Spain, specifically in the Madrid area," the warrants said.
Posted by: Dan Darling || 04/01/2004 9:59:20 AM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:


3/11 mastermind identified
A Tunisian sought by Spanish police in connection with the March 11 Madrid train bombings is believed to have been a key figure behind the biggest ever terrorist attack on Spain, judicial sources said. The sources said Serhane Ben Abdelmajid Fakhet, one of six men against whom Spanish authorities issued international arrest warrants on Tuesday, was "a leading element and coordinator of various people implicated" in the coordinated blasts which killed 191 people on four commuter trains.

Fakhet, nicknamed The Tunisian, is being sought, along with Moroccans Jamal Ahmidan, brothers Mohammed and Rachid Oulad Akcha, Abdennabi Kounjaa (alias Abdallah) and Said Berraj on suspicion of "terrorism, voluntary homicide and belonging to a proscribed organisation." Spanish authorities believe members of the Moroccan Islamist Combatant Group (MICG) thought to be behind bombings in Morocco's biggest city Casablanca in May last year may likewise be behind the Madrid blasts with the majority of the suspects already detained Moroccan nationals. According to the warrant out on Fakhet he a "key element (whose) activity seeks to inculcate Jihad ('holy' war) among people within his entourage. He was also involved in the renting of a house at Morata de Tajuna south of Madrid where investigators believe the bombs were prepared for their attack. Several of the fugitive Moroccan suspects against whom warrants have been issued are believed to have lived at the property. Berraj is moreover alleged to have links to Al-Qaeda, as well as Fakhet and Syrian Basel Ghayoun, who is already in detention.

Additional: The document said Moroccan suspect Berraj met with three al-Qaida suspects in Istanbul in October 2000 and had ties with Basel Ghayoun, a Syrian who is already jailed on charges of mass murder and belonging to a terrorist organization in connection to the Madrid attacks. Berraj left his home March 9 and told people March 12 that he was leaving Spain reportedly to attend the funeral of a sister in Morocco, the documents say. Subsequent police investigations showed he does not have a sister. Spanish police are holding 19 people, 14 of whom have been charged. Excluding Otman El Gnaout, a detainee whose nationality has not been announced, there are 11 Moroccans or Moroccan-born Spaniards, two Indians, two Spaniards and three Syrians in custody. Four suspects were to have been brought before del Olmo on Thursday but the session was postponed until Friday. The four are El Gnaout, Syrians Walid Altaraki and Mohamad Badr Ddin Akkad, and Moroccan Fouad Almorabit, who had been questioned and released Tuesday and was re-arrested Wednesday. Del Olmo has also ordered the reappearance Friday of Spanish detainee Antonio Toro Castro, brother-in-law of a Spaniard already charged with supplying dynamite to the bombers.
Posted by: Dan Darling || 04/01/2004 9:58:01 AM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:


Europe sweep on Turkish extremists
A series of arrests have been made in co-ordinated raids across Europe targeting a Turkish extremist group. Istanbul police arrested 25 suspected members of the Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front, DHKP-C, which has carried out many attacks in Turkey. Another 16 were held in Italy, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands. The group, which aims to topple the Turkish government and replace it with a Marxist one, has been banned by the US and the European Union. It has admitted carrying out two suicide bomb attacks in Istanbul in September 2001 that killed three policemen and one Australian citizen and wounded 28 people, mostly police officers. The illegal group has carried out other bombings since 2001.

The early morning raids come after a year of investigation into the activities of the group - begun by Turkish and German police. German and Italian investigators subdequently discovered that the group was also active in the Netherlands and Belgium and co-ordinated the European crackdown outside Turkey, a Turkish interior ministry spokesman said. The Italian raid centred on the town of Perugia - which has a university for foreigners. In a news conference, the Perugia chief prosecutor said that telephone and wire taps during the investigation had revealed the flow of funds, arms and information among supporters of the group in many European countries. Three Italian and two Turkish nationals were held in Italy. One of the Turkish nationals was said to have headed the DHKP-C cell - which was helped by local Italian anti-imperialist campaigners, Italian authorities say. Among the Italians arrested is Moreno Pasquinelli, spokesman for the Anti-imperialist Camp - a group opposed to the US-led occupation of Iraq. They had been gathering funds to finance the Iraqi resistance to the occupation. "We support the armed struggle in Iraq. Our money is to help them, it doesn't matter to us if they use it buy weapons, Kalashnikovs, or medicines for people," Mr Pasquinelli told the BBC last year.
Gee, a anti-war, anti-US group exposed as a terrorist front? What a surprise!

Additional from Italy: Ten remands for cusody for criminal association with the aim of international terrorism were carried out, five of which in Italy to members belonging to the Dhkp-c cell, the revolutionary party for the liberation of the people, a Turkish Marxist-Leninist organisation which surfaced in 1992 after the split of the same movement into two ideological currents. The Italian cell has found much support, collaboration and the supply of means and money in Perugia and had at its helm three Italian citizens with marked Marxist-Leninist connotations and anti-imperalist beliefs. This is how a major international anti-terrorist operation took place this morning which involved a series of arrests, other than in the Perugia area also in Turkey, Belgium and Holland. Searches were also carried out in the houses of those arrested, as well as the confiscation of internet sites, a tool with which they sent each other encrypted messages which the anti-subversion department in Rome is working on to decipher.
Posted by: Steve || 04/01/2004 9:51:49 AM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:


Germany keeping local Osamanauts under surveillance
In the wake of the Madrid bombings and this week’s arrests in Britain, German investigators say there are plenty of potentially violent Islamists in the country who need to be kept under surveillance. German domestic intelligence agencies normally provide public information on who they are watching, but they are unwilling to say much about what they know of Islamic extremists. Extremists are reported to be particularly active in the Moslem communities of Berlin, Bonn and Munich as well as in the smaller cities of Aachen, Ulm, Hanover and Braunschweig. It is assumed that certain mosques in these towns are closely watched, though anti-subversion police will not confirm this.

The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) estimates that around 30,000 Moslems in Germany are members of extremist groups. Hartmut Koschyk, a politician in the Christian Social Union (CSU) who receives intelligence briefings, says 2,000 to 3,000 of them would be willing to use violence to achieve their ends. The BfV's annual report uses the term "Arab mujahedin" for the loose network of militants who remain in contact with one another after fighting in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Chechnya, or paramilitary and ideological training in mujahedin camps. The agency describes al-Qaeda, led by Osama bin Laden, as a cadre-based "core group" within this wider network, which also has connections to regional Islamist movements in North Africa, Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon.
The reference is to the International Islamic Front, of which Binny's mob as we know it is the central command or board of directors.

Investigators have been acutely aware that Germany, with its tolerant lifestyle, could easily be used as a safe haven by Islamists practising terrorism elsewhere. Three of the four 11 September suicide pilots were Arab students from the port city of Hamburg. Police say Islamists tend to see Germany as a resting area rather than as a prime target. Attacks in the host country would mean it was no longer a safe haven, but naturally Madrid-style attacks are perfectly possible in Germany. Last week, intelligence agencies caught wind of an attempt to kill German President Johannes Rau during a visit to Djibouti, and Rau flew home. However agencies believe this was connected with conflicts in the Horn of Africa rather than with Germany itself.

Travel by persons suspected of terrorism is closely observed, especially visits to countries in which ringleaders of the Arab mujahedin are staying. There has been controversy in Germany about whether to expel persons who have in any way supported terrorist organizations. The CSU and its sister Christian Democratic Union (CDU) say deportation should be the rule for any foreigner in an extremist group. Interior Minister Otto Schily may possibly sympathize but the rest of the ruling Social Democrats and Greens have in the past seen this approach as illiberal and in conflict with basic human rights.
Posted by: Dan Darling || 04/01/2004 1:17:25 AM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  [Troll droppings deleted]
Posted by: Murray TROLL || 04/01/2004 8:03 Comments || Top||

#2  [Troll droppings deleted]
Posted by: Man Bites Dog TROLL || 04/01/2004 8:16 Comments || Top||

#3  "There's a basic human right to support terrorist organizations?"

The German Foreign Minister thinks so. :-<
Posted by: Ernest Brown || 04/01/2004 14:13 Comments || Top||

#4  There is a misinterpretation in the article. The discussion is not about whether "to expel persons who have in any way supported terrorist organizations" but whether to expel them on the grounds of mere (unproven) suspicion.
Posted by: True German Ally || 04/01/2004 14:26 Comments || Top||

#5  [Troll droppings deleted]
Posted by: Man Bites Dog TROLL || 04/01/2004 17:58 Comments || Top||

#6 
There has been controversy in Germany about whether to expel persons who have in any way supported terrorist organizations. ... the ruling Social Democrats and Greens have in the past seen this approach as illiberal and in conflict with basic human rights.

There's a basic human right to support terrorist organizations?
.
Posted by: Mike Sylwester || 04/01/2004 8:16 Comments || Top||

#7  Does Germany ever expel anyone for violating his visa?
Posted by: Mike Sylwester || 04/01/2004 17:58 Comments || Top||

#8  Fred Pruitt censors truth while Americans die in Iraq on basis of lies.
Posted by: German TROLL || 04/01/2004 8:03 Comments || Top||


International arrest warrants issued for 3/11 co-conspirators
A Spanish judge issued international arrest warrants for a Tunisian and five Moroccans suspected of involvement in the Madrid train bombings that killed 191 people. Another suspect identified as Otman El Gnaout was arrested, a court official announced today, giving no details of the nationality of the man or the place of his arrest. He said a Moroccan who had been released was also re-arrested. Also today, Judge Juan del Olmo questioned two people in court, releasing one of them and ordered the other to return Friday for more questioning. The Interior Ministry distributed the names and photographs contained in six international warrants issued by del Olmo. They included Sarhane Ben Abdelmajid Fakhet of Tunisia; and Moroccans Jamal Ahmidan, alias El Chino; Said Berraj; Abdennabi Kounjaa, alias Abdallah; Mohammed Oulad Akcha; and Rachid Oulad Akcha. The last two are brothers to Naima Oulad Akcha, the only woman charged in the case so far, a court official said.

Interior Minister Angel Acebes yesterday identified the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group as the main focus of investigation in the March 11 bombings in Madrid, which killed 191 people and injured more than 1,800 others. That extremist group is a forerunner of Salafia Jihadia, which Morocco blamed for last year's Casablanca bombings that killed 33 people and 12 suicide bombers. At least five members of the Combatant group, including alleged leaders Nouredine Nfia and Salahedine Benyaich, trained in al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan between 1999 and 2001, Moroccan officials said.

Moroccan Mustapha Ahmidam and Antonio Toro Castro, the brother-in-law of a Spaniard charged with supplying dynamite to the bombers, were questioned by the judge today. Ahmidam was released, and Castro was ordered to return to court on Friday. Another Moroccan, Fouad Almorabit, was re-arrested. Del Olmo interrogated Almorabit among a group of five suspects brought before the National Court on Monday, and ordered him released early Tuesday. The reason for the re-arrest was not immediately clear. The radio station Cadena Ser said one of the suspects who went before the judge told him the attack was motivated by the occupation of Iraq and that Britain, Spain and the United States are held responsible. Two Syrians arrested Tuesday, Walid Altaraki and Mohamad Badr Ddin Akkad, are set to appear tomorrow. Interior Minister Acebes said some of the chief perpetrators were among those in custody.
Posted by: Dan Darling || 04/01/2004 12:54:28 AM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  [Troll droppings deleted]
Posted by: Murray TROLL || 04/01/2004 8:18 Comments || Top||

#2  Fred Pruitt censors truth while Americans die in Iraq on basis of lies.

Mr.Pruitt, please stop the censorship -- we'll give you a little rest now. Sorry, but this is the only way you allows us to be heard.
Posted by: Free Speech Enforcer TROLL || 04/01/2004 8:18 Comments || Top||


Great White North
Saudis hold father of Canadian terrorism suspect
The brother of an Ottawa man charged this week under Canada's anti-terrorism laws said Wednesday their father is being held by authorities in Saudi Arabia. The RCMP laid terrorism charges against Mohammed Momin Khawaja Tuesday, after carrying out a raid on the family's suburban Ottawa home the previous day. Qasim Khawaja said on Wednesday he believes his father, Mahboob Khawaja, is being held in police custody in Saudi Arabia. "It's like a double devastation for the family," Khawaja told reporters after being turned away from an Ottawa jail without being able to visit his brother. "We just found out my dad has been detained in Saudi Arabia. "We don't know exactly what for."
Hummmm, questioning as a suspect or material witness comes to mind. Being Saudi, it also could be a briefing on his next mission.
Mahboob Khawaja, 62, has a PhD in social sciences from Syracuse University. He lives in Yanbu, Saudi Arabia where he works as an administrator at a polytechnical school. The Department of Foreign Affairs said it is looking into the case, but has no information about Khawaja from the Saudi authorities. A Pakistani born in the disputed province of Kashmir, the senior Khawaja has written several articles critical of western and Arab leaders.
Maybe he criticized the Master Race, that can get you in trouble there.
After moving to Canada, he fathered five children. Mohammed Momin Khawaja, 24, on Tuesday became the first Canadian charged under the country's new anti-terrorism laws. Police say the charges stem from activity in Ottawa and London, England. Officials have refused to comment on whether developments in Ottawa and Saudi Arabia have anything to do with the arrests in London this week of eight men of Pakistani origin, along with material which could be used for making explosives.
My money says "yes".
Momin is a computer programmer who was working under contract with the Foreign Affairs Department when he was arrested.
That's very interesting. Wonder what kind of data he had access to?
Qasim Khawaja said his extended family has hundreds of members in England, and his brother did travel to England last November or December for a few days to find a bride. "Obviously, you don't find somebody. You just meet somebody and see if they're willing to blow themselves up compatible and then go from there." He also said $10,000 in $100 bills found by police under his bed was startup money for Ottawa Jihad Inc a new business. "I had it in a bank, but the thing is, as Muslims we don't take interest and that's why I took it out of the bank."
Sure you did.
Posted by: Steve || 04/01/2004 10:54:36 AM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Hmmm...wonder if the Saudi prisons have been inspected by the Riyadh Fire Marshall yet. Do you think their matresses are still flammable?
Posted by: Seafarious || 04/01/2004 12:47 Comments || Top||

#2  LH / Ptah - The Saudis KNOW family clans / tribal affiliations are powerful and influential. In their world, a jihadi doesn't just spring out of the ground fully formed. And sans any social strictures, they know to grab Daddy and slap him in irons. I pity the soles of his feet, at this point.

Of course, they could, indeed, be briefing him to replace sonny-boy... Lol!
Posted by: .com || 04/01/2004 14:08 Comments || Top||


Canadian Muslim linked to UK bomb plot
A plot by suspected al Qaeda supporters to carry out a bomb attack in London has been linked to a computer specialist in Canada charged with terrorist offences. Mohammad Momin Khawaja, 29, who is of Pakistani descent, has been charged with conspiring to carry out a terrorist attack in London and the Canadian capital Ottawa. He was arrested in Ottawa on Monday by officers from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police who searched his home for bombs. Relatives said that the Canadian-born man had recently visited London to see relatives. Khawaja was arrested in Canada 12 hours before the 6.30am raids in Britain. He was charged on Tuesday with participating in or contributing to the activities of a terrorist group and facilitating terrorist activity. Khawaja's father has written a number of books critical of American foreign policy and of western influence on Middle East politics since coming to Canada more than 30 years ago from Pakistan.
Ummm... But that's not the reason Momin was arrested, is it? So why bring it up? Or do they pay you by the word at NZ Herald?
Khawaja was remanded in custody until Friday. The charges state that between 10 November 2003, and 29 March this year, Mr Khawaja "did knowingly participate in or contribute to, directly or indirectly, an activity of a terrorist group, for the purpose of enhancing the ability of a terrorist group to facilitate or carry out a terrorist activity" in Ottawa and London. He is also accused that in the same period and in those same cities, he "did knowingly facilitate a terrorist activity".
So he wasn't arrested because Pop wrote a book critical of U.S. policy. Pop wrote a book critical of U.S. policy because he's head of a terror family. That would kinda sorta throw the arguments in the book under suspicion, wouldn't it?
Khawaja was arrested during an operation that included armed police at the Canadian government's department of foreign affairs where he was doing private work as a software developer. Qasim Khawaja, 26, the suspect's brother said the police searched bombs and bomb-making material at their house. "The door was blown open and guys with masks and guns came in, told us to get down on the ground," he said. Two other brothers, Tanzeel, 20, and Mohsan, 18, were arrested, but released. Their mother, Azra, and a sister, Sabeen, 27, were questioned. Khawaja's father, Dr Mahboob A Khawaja, the director of a polytechnical institute in Saudi Arabia, is the author of a book about Islamic fundamentalism "Muslims and the West". He has written academic essays on conflict resolution in which he accuses the West of decrying Islamic fundamentalism without attempting to understand it. Dr Khawaja said his son's arrest was "nothing more than a hoax to create embarrassment."
Was that before the Soddies arrested him?
Posted by: Dan Darling || 04/01/2004 12:57:18 AM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1 
he accuses the West of decrying Islamic fundamentalism without attempting to understand it

We understand that his fundamentalist son is a terrorist.
.
Posted by: Mike Sylwester || 04/01/2004 1:31 Comments || Top||

#2  Dr Mahboob (booby) director of a polytechnical institute (aka fake-o-institute) in Saudi Arabia (el fakeland)

I decry!
Posted by: Lucky || 04/01/2004 1:32 Comments || Top||

#3  If one family member is an asshat, especially the father, assume the others are too. Release nobody. Invoke your damned terrorist laws, if you have any, and squeeze these clowns. Damn your arrogant slacker immigration policies, sloppy security, and apologist gov't riddled with symps, Canada. You'll learn the hard way - and cost us dearly in the process.
Posted by: .com || 04/01/2004 2:02 Comments || Top||

#4  .com, your right on. Our immigration laws are foolish enough, but Canada's immigration laws are pure f*cking insanity.
Posted by: Jarhead || 04/01/2004 7:51 Comments || Top||

#5  [Troll droppings deleted]
Posted by: Murray TROLL || 04/01/2004 8:12 Comments || Top||

#6  Fred Pruitt censors truth while Americans die in Iraq on basis of lies.
Posted by: Canadian TROLL || 04/01/2004 8:12 Comments || Top||


Saif al-Adel sez hit Canada
Canada has been named again in a chilling new call to arms from al Qaeda. A posting found this week on an al Qaeda website places Canada fifth on a target list.
That idea would probably make more sense to me if I had a turban. As it is, it make no sense.
The website is believed to be published by senior al Qaeda figure, Saif al-Adel. It calls on followers to attack Canadians and other westerners at home and abroad.
The policy would seem to be exploiting the weakest links in a supposed alliance of infidels to break it. But Canada hasn't been that great an ally in the WoT, with the exception of the guys in Afghanistan. I think the Liberals would be much happier if they shared a border with Luxembourg, rather than with us.
Experts warn it could be only a matter of time before Canada is hit. Several other countries named on the list -- such as Spain and Australia -- have already been attacked. Terror experts warn that Canadians have a false sense of security. "We're a target. We're very clearly in its crosshairs," says John Thompson of the Mackenzie Institute. Terror experts warn there appears to be an escalating strategy to strike "softer" targets of the West.
Hey! I guessed that before I read this far! Do I get a prize?
"I think Canadians should take it very seriously," says American terror watchdog Rita Katz. "Especially considering the fact that the manuals they are using are the ones they use to communicate to al Qaeda throughout the world." In Ottawa, Public Security Minister Anne McLellan downplayed any threat.
Which is precisely why it's a waste of explosives for al-Qaeda to target the Great White North...
"We are a named country, that is very clear. That is not new. Osama bin Laden named us. We know that we are a named country and we act accordingly," she told reporters in Ottawa.
"We're negotiating right now to trade most of what is now Canada for part of Belgium — the French part, not that icky Walloon part — and as soon as the deal goes through we're moving."
But a new report suggests Canada wouldn't react very well at all. A Senate committee found that if Canada is hit with a terrorist attack or major natural disaster, its frontline workers won't be equipped to deal with it. The committee found:
* There is still no national plan to deal with biological attacks

* Few police forces are equipped with the proper protective gear

* Police, firefighters and ambulance forces in most communities are all on different communications systems.

* The report also found problems at our national agency responsible for co-ordinating emergencies, the Office of Critical Infrastructure Protection and Emergency Preparedness.

* The office's phone system when down during the power blackout in Ontario last August.
As well, half of Canada's communities didn't know what the agency was. Of those that did, half questioned its usefulness. Red tape and bureaucratic hassles are hampering their potential effectiveness, said the committee, which studied the issue for more than two years.
See how European they are? They set up a committee. That way they didn't have to do anything for two entire years. Look at all the money they saved, money much better spent on social programs.
Canadians "should be damned mad about it," said Colin Kenny, chairman of the Senate committee on national security and defence, at an Ottawa news conference. "Canadians are entitled to reasonable service when an emergency hits, and entitled to have their officials plan in advance and have the right equipment there and available," Kenny said. Kenny was particularly scornful of OCIPEP, saying it can do everything but respond to an emergency.
Posted by: Dan Darling || 04/01/2004 12:16:46 AM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  And we're talking the country that cut back immensely on its army recently, IIRC.
Posted by: Korora || 04/01/2004 0:30 Comments || Top||

#2  Pardon my ignorance, but when was Australia hit?

Secondly, have the terrorists ever threatened the countries of Norway, Sweden, Holland, or Denmark?
Posted by: ex-lib || 04/01/2004 1:11 Comments || Top||

#3  And I guarantee you that when they are hit, they'll blame the U.S., rather than the Islamizoids. (At least the leftists will; I know there are still sane Canadians, and hope they aren't the ones killed in the attack.)

When it happens, wonder if the Chomsky-ites will tell the Canadians to ask themselves why the terrorists hate them?

Message to Canadian law enforcement: If you all happen to get into hot pursuit of some of your Islamoterrorists, heading for our border, come on down. Just please try to let us know what you're chasing so we can kill them for you so your screwed-up courts won't let them go.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut || 04/01/2004 1:11 Comments || Top||

#4  Australia got hit with the Bali bombing.

I believe that Norway has also been singled out by al-Zawahiri.
Posted by: Dan Darling || 04/01/2004 1:12 Comments || Top||

#5  ex-lib: I think they're referring to the bombing in Bali, which was aimed at, and murdered, mostly Australians.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut || 04/01/2004 1:13 Comments || Top||

#6  Barbara - re: chases by RCMP - right on: hammer, meet anvil.
Posted by: .com || 04/01/2004 1:42 Comments || Top||

#7  I demand to know how they prepare their target list. Not once have my beautiful far-flung Isle of Langerhans been mentioned as a potential target. Now how am I going to get US Foreign Aid without this distinction? There be big money in terrorism if you play your cards right, at least that's what my overpaid advisor, Jesse Jackson, tells me. He promised I'd rake it in. Shit! I was counting on that as my seed money, then rolling over and selling out to the Soros Socialist Machine and then my web stuff to PUA, then absconding with the lot and retiring to someplace they've never heard of, like Yap or San Marino... and there are a lot of places they've never heard of. I know - I audited a madrassah "geography" class and it consisted of being able to approximate in which direction Mekkkah lies from anywhere on the planet - within 20 km of Quetta, anyway.

Hey, Izzoids, over here! Hit Meeee! Hit Meeee! Shit.
Posted by: .com (Prez for Life - My Isles of Langerhans) || 04/01/2004 2:36 Comments || Top||

#8  Ex-lib:
The Netherlands were named several times in communications coming from Al-Q., the dutch government imedeatly responded by implementing operation: lets put our heads in the sand, if we cant see them, they'll believe they cant see us.
Posted by: Evert Visser in NL || 04/01/2004 2:44 Comments || Top||

#9  Folks, I'm not understanding why the bad guys would target Canada? In the true sense of the phrase they would be shitting in their mess kit to attack Canada. Since the fall of Afghanistan Canada is/has been their most secure safe harbor. They may be dumb and stupid but are they total imbeciles? That doesn't compute to me as Canada is strategically an ideal location to conduct more attacks on the US. Could be wrong in my thinking. Puzzling to me. Chine
Posted by: Chiner || 04/01/2004 3:34 Comments || Top||

#10  It's like the summer olympic bids all over again. Canadian mediocrity. Never at the bottom, but somehow we always manage to lose the top spot. I'd like to know who beat us out and why. Who made the top five?
Posted by: Rafael || 04/01/2004 7:35 Comments || Top||

#11  Chiner, there you go being all logical/rational and stuff. To the logical tactician (i.e. you, I, and most folks on this site), Canada would be a dream base of ops to run terror cells out of. Lax immigration laws, weakening defensive posture, easy access to CONUS. However, and (lucky for us) the Al Q nuts are more radical then logical. This is going to be a long war but they will make it easier w/this type of shit.
Posted by: Jarhead || 04/01/2004 7:56 Comments || Top||

#12  Al Qaeda is not hitting 'soft' targets. They are hitting ANY target.

The US response to 911 knocked AQ back on their heels. Now, 30 months later, Al Qaeda has shifted its strategy: They are shitting in their own pool and on their own folks, supporters and allies, those folks they know will either be too scared or too stupid to respond.
Posted by: badanov || 04/01/2004 8:19 Comments || Top||

#13  Question is:Wich way will Canada jump?
Will they whimper,whine,and cower down?
Or will they get trully pissed and unleash a brigade of Canadian snipers for a hunting expedition?
Posted by: Raptor || 04/01/2004 8:52 Comments || Top||

#14  Will they whimper,whine,and cower down? That's all you see and hear now!

Canadian politician are still living in the 9/10 world. It cannot happen here is the modus operandi. They have absorbed the multicultural mode for so long they have no other way of acting. De Nile flows into the St Lawrence just downstream of Ottawa.

Canada is but a collection of badly run health care providers. And if last years SARS experience is any measure, and serious terrorist attack would quickly collapse that process.

Canada will depend on the US to come to their aid, just like they have done throughout the Cold War. But do not expect any thanks, just whining, wimpering, and cowering. Morally, politically, and economically bancrupt.

There, I feel better.
Posted by: john || 04/01/2004 9:44 Comments || Top||

#15  I see that Iran's "house arrest" program has really reined Adel in.
Posted by: Tibor || 04/01/2004 10:56 Comments || Top||

#16  john, should alqaeda hit Canada, we can expect the prime minister to promptly board a private jet for a Caribbean golfing vacation.
Posted by: Rafael || 04/01/2004 15:27 Comments || Top||

#17  Remember a fox does not crap in its own hole and the foxes live among us.
Posted by: Anonymous4030 || 04/05/2004 21:13 Comments || Top||


Home Front: WoT
Former FBI Translator Testifies About Indications of Attack Using Aircraft
A former translator for the FBI with top-secret security clearance says she has provided information to the panel investigating the 11 September attacks which proves senior officials knew of al-Qa’ida’s plans to attack the US with aircraft months before the strikes happened. She said the claim by the National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, that there was no such information was "an outrageous lie".

Sibel Edmonds said she spent more than three hours in a closed session with the commission’s investigators providing information that was circulating within the FBI in the spring and summer of 2001 suggesting that an attack using aircraft was just months away and the terrorists were in place. The Bush administration, meanwhile, has sought to silence her and has obtained a gagging order from a court by citing the rarely used "state secrets privilege".

She told The Independent yesterday: "I gave [the commission] details of specific investigation files, the specific dates, specific target information, specific managers in charge of the investigation. I gave them everything so that they could go back and follow up. This is not hearsay. These are things that are documented. These things can be established very easily."

She added: "There was general information about the time-frame, about methods to be used ­ but not specifically about how they would be used ­ and about people being in place and who was ordering these sorts of terror attacks. There were other cities that were mentioned. Major cities ­ with skyscrapers." ....

Mrs Edmonds, 33, says she gave her evidence to the commission in a specially constructed "secure" room at its offices in Washington on 11 February. She was hired as a translator for the FBI’s Washington field office on 13 September 2001, just two days after the al-Qa’ida attacks. Her job was to translate documents and recordings from FBI wire-taps.

She said said it was clear there was sufficient information during the spring and summer of 2001 to indicate terrorists were planning an attack. "Most of what I told the commission ­ 90 per cent of it ­ related to the investigations that I was involved in or just from working in the department. Two hundred translators side by side, you get to see and hear a lot of other things as well. President Bush said they had no specific information about 11 September and that is accurate but only because he said 11 September," she said. There was, however, general information about the use of airplanes and that an attack was just months away. ....
Posted by: Mike Sylwester || 04/01/2004 10:51:14 PM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  No mention that Sibel is also suing the FBI?
Posted by: Robert Crawford || 04/01/2004 23:33 Comments || Top||

#2  Should Ms. Edmonds' statements be borne out by the evidence, I would like to see impeachment hearings instituted and perjury trials begun for much of the current administration's top security officials. Clarke has already made a convincing case for the low priority that terrorism received. If such dire warnings went entirely unheeded, then the White House has the blood of American citizens on its hands.
Posted by: Zenster || 04/01/2004 23:38 Comments || Top||

#3  Nice try, lefty. Next time, pick something that doesn't have two strikes against it the second it's posted:

(1) being originally posted on CommonWetDreams, and
(2) having the UK Independent as a source. As an objective source of information, it's only about a quarter-step above the Daily Worker.

I won't even dwell on Ms. Edmonds' ability to divine what was in the minds of senior FBI officials pre-9/11, when she didn't start there until 9/13.
Posted by: Ricky bin Ricardo (Abu Babaloo) || 04/01/2004 23:58 Comments || Top||

#4  Everyone knew that some terrorist act in the air was brewing during the summer of 2001. I specifically remember counseling guys to be careful before they traveled over to Asia, Japan in particular. Upon arrival at work 9/11/01 I learned of the attack and remember thinking, "So, that's what it was." This much was public knowledge and in our newspapers, but the specific attack was still a surprise. Where was I working? In the Government, perhaps? No -- a start up in Silicon Valley.
Posted by: Anonymous3986 || 04/02/2004 0:04 Comments || Top||

#5  RC, don't you mean SYBIL??!
One look at this woman's puss and you know she is Trouble with a capital "T."
Zenster, keep dreamin' and living in your meditative state.
Posted by: Jen || 04/02/2004 0:06 Comments || Top||

#6  Clarke has already made a convincing case for the low priority that terrorism received.

His "case" is only convincing to those who have drunk the Democrat kool-aid. Anyone with half a brain realizes it was Clarke that dropped the ball for eight years. His "case" is a tissue of lies put together by a bitter, sick little man who wants to get revenge on the people who "dissed" him.
Posted by: Robert Crawford || 04/02/2004 0:08 Comments || Top||

#7  Yeah, Ill bet it was "general" -- and "sufficient" is another wonderful non-specific word. It takes an utterly intellectually dishonest moron to believe that hindsight and foresight are the same thing. Those who can barely manage the former expect 20/20 at all times of everyone else in the latter.

Zenster, I love your disingenuous intro, where you pretend that you are undecided and awaiting developments. Puhleeze kiss my hairy ass. You are definitely one of the the aforementioned morons - and a tool / sucker (you choose) of posturing, preening, lying political assholes who can't balance a checkbook or program the fucking coffeemaker, yet they expect perfection from others. Especially when it serves their true ends - which are purely political.

Collections of these cretins call themselves "commissions" - how official and proper. Right. They sit in judgement of real people doing real work and manage NEVER to have a deliverable on THEIR plate, no no, heaven forbid. Fucktards and cowards.

The most purely obscene thing in human existence is criticism from a fucking voyeur.

People like you and this FBI translator are a dime a dozen. Gutless and transparently opportunistic. Pray that she's the bombshell your ilk is dreaming of -- Clarke's transparency is already apparent and Rice will finish him off, exposing him and your commission of pol whores. If only they cared one whit for the security of America but, alas, it' is obvious that they do not. Nor do you. Nor do you fool anyone.

Fuck off, asshole.
Posted by: .com || 04/02/2004 0:11 Comments || Top||

#8  Sheesh! 4 posts come in while I'm pounding the shit out of my keyboard! Sigh.

Anyway, fuck Zenster and his lot of cretins.
Posted by: .com || 04/02/2004 0:13 Comments || Top||

#9  Hey, just because Shrub is a fundamentalist wingnut who may be conflating Middle East policy with eschatology or some old family feud doesn't mean I'm against China getting its ass kicked for trade domination. For that matter, instead of Iraq, it's Iran that more desperately needs their government toppled or nuclear facilities demolished, whichever comes first. Even North Korea was a lot higher than Iraq on the list of priorities.

I just have lots of trouble with a putative leader attempting to legislate discrimination into our constitution. Constantly portraying pluralistic America as a Christian nation by intentionally blurring the separation of church and state has only served to invite further terrorist attacks upon our soil.

Prematurely rotating the troops most qualified to apprehend bin Laden and Mullah Omar out of Afghanistan so he could settle his daddy's stale hash with a tin pot despot like Saddam is just another button the coat. Even without Edmonds' testimony, there's already been enough lies told about Iraq to make Baron von Munchausen look like Honest Abe.

NOTE: Those of you who so readily descend into personalities automatically preclude yourselves from consideration as intelligent participants in any discussion.
Posted by: Zenster || 04/02/2004 3:26 Comments || Top||

#10  "Those of you who so readily descend into personalities automatically preclude yourselves from consideration as intelligent participants in any discussion."
I'm not the one calling our President a "fundamentalist wingnut."
BTW, I am a fundamentalist wingnut, too!
The minute I see you participating intelligently, I'll "consider" you for a discussion, also.
Get over yourself and your awful "ideas."
I suggest you go back to DUH Underground...RB really isn't your kind of place!
Posted by: Jen || 04/02/2004 4:46 Comments || Top||


It’s the Jooos! Director of 9/11 Commission: Israel the Reason for War in Iraq
EFL
Philip Zelikow, executive asshat director of the 9/11 commission, has suggested a prime motive for the war in Iraq was to protect Israel.
Okay. Let’s pretend: And this would be bad becuase...?
"Why would Iraq attack America or use nuclear weapons against us? I’ll tell you what I think the real threat [is] and actually has been since 1990 - it’s the threat against Israel,” Zelikow told a crowd at the University of Virginia on Sept. 10, 2002, speaking on a panel of foreign policy experts.
Posted by: Dragon Fly || 04/01/2004 10:36:46 AM || Comments || Link || [1 views] Top|| File under:

#1  he must be boris buddy.
Posted by: muck4doo || 04/01/2004 11:33 Comments || Top||

#2  Oh, of course! Why didn't we see it before? It's all part of the Evil Zionist Conspiracy (patent pending) to overthrow the world and to become the center of attention all at the same time! How could we all have been so stupid, so misled?
Posted by: The Doctor || 04/01/2004 14:06 Comments || Top||

#3  Oh yeah, this 9/11 Commission is "for the good of America" - no politics here! Lol!
Posted by: .com || 04/01/2004 14:39 Comments || Top||

#4  It is April fools, so I'll wait a few days to believe it.
Posted by: RussSchultz || 04/01/2004 16:26 Comments || Top||

#5  Is this a fake item or what? I can't tell. I've lost my sense of humor about things the past two weeks.
Posted by: Phil Fraering || 04/01/2004 17:20 Comments || Top||

#6  [Troll droppings deleted]
Posted by: Jason TROLL || 04/01/2004 21:52 Comments || Top||

#7  muck4doo, truth is my "buddy", and I wouldn't want to be a Jew or a Traitor when America wakes up. By censoring the truth Fred Pruitt is promoting hatred against the Jews which for now is simmering, but if it starts boiling it will be too late to repent or recover lost ground.

Fred, truth is the only way to world peace and the survival of mankind, think about it. BTW, I have no hard feelings against anyone here, it's strickly a fight for truth.

Boris
Posted by: Boris Pribich || 04/01/2004 12:01 Comments || Top||

#8  muck4doo, truth is my "buddy", and I wouldn't want to be a Jew or a Traitor when America wakes up. By censoring the truth Fred Pruitt is promoting hatred against the Jews which for now is simmering, but if it starts boiling it will be too late to repent or recover lost ground.

Fred, truth is the only way to world peace and the survival of mankind, think about it. BTW, I have no hard feelings against anyone here, it's strickly a fight for truth.

Boris
Posted by: Boris Pribich || 04/01/2004 12:01 Comments || Top||

#9  Rantburg visitor, Fred Pruitt is not just a traitor, he is also a liar -- post below was censored this morning for being "off topic or offensive" -- you be the judge.

Poster: Boris Pribich
E-Mail:
Website:
Comment: muck4doo, truth is my "buddy", and I wouldn't want to be a Jew or a Traitor when America wakes up. By censoring the truth Fred Pruitt is promoting hatred against the Jews which for now is simmering, but if it starts boiling it will be too late to repent or recover lost ground.

Fred, truth is the only way to world peace and the survival of mankind, think about it. BTW, I have no hard feelings against anyone here, it's strickly a fight for truth.
Posted by: Jake || 04/01/2004 21:50 Comments || Top||

#10  Rantburg visitor, Fred Pruitt is not just a traitor, he is also a liar -- post below was censored this morning for being "off topic or offensive" -- you be the judge.

Poster: Boris Pribich
E-Mail:
Website:
Comment: muck4doo, truth is my "buddy", and I wouldn't want to be a Jew or a Traitor when America wakes up. By censoring the truth Fred Pruitt is promoting hatred against the Jews which for now is simmering, but if it starts boiling it will be too late to repent or recover lost ground.

Fred, truth is the only way to world peace and the survival of mankind, think about it. BTW, I have no hard feelings against anyone here, it's strickly a fight for truth.
Posted by: Jake || 04/01/2004 21:50 Comments || Top||

#11  Rantburg visitor, Fred Pruitt is not just a traitor, he is also a liar -- post below was censored this morning for being "off topic or offensive" -- you be the judge.

Poster: B_oris P_ribich
E-Mail:
Website:
Comment: muck4doo, truth is my "buddy", and I wouldn't want to be a Jew or a Traitor when America wakes up. By censoring the truth Fred Pruitt is promoting hatred against the Jews which for now is simmering, but if it starts boiling it will be too late to repent or recover lost ground.

Fred, truth is the only way to world peace and the survival of mankind, think about it. BTW, I have no hard feelings against anyone here, it's strickly a fight for truth.
Posted by: Jake TROLL || 04/01/2004 21:52 Comments || Top||


Iraqi spy jailed for 46 months by US court
CHICAGO: A newspaper publisher who spied on Iraqi dissidents in the United States for the regime of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein was sentenced to 46 months in jail.
Khaled Abdel-Latif Dumeisi was arrested in July last year and convicted in January of acting as "an unregistered agent" for the Hussein regime, conspiracy and perjury. They said the 61-year-old was in regular contact with Iraqi officials at the country's then-UN mission, and passed information to the Iraqi intelligence agency, or Mukhabbarat, through those officials.
Should have charged him with spying. Can we at least kick him out of the country after he does his time, please?
Posted by: Steve || 04/01/2004 8:55:30 AM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:


Southeast Asia
Four detained Malaysians confess to JI membership
Four Malaysians detained in Indonesia for activities linked to Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) are expected to give their confessions in a special report over TV3 tomorrow at 8.30pm. The four include one of JI's former top leaders, Mohamed Nasir Abbas. He, together with Amran Mansor, Jaafar Anwarul and Shamsul Bahri Husein are now held in an Indonesian jail, waiting to face charges.

TV3's one-hour special, titled ‘Confession of JI Members' will focus on their involvement in the organisation. But they also said they no longer subscribe to JI beliefs and that they were misled into embracing the fanatical Islamic ideology by JI leaders. TV3 director of news and current affairs Datuk Kamarulzaman Zainal told The Malay Mail yesterday: "The report is to give viewers an insight into JI and its former members who have renounced the organisation's ideology. "The report tells how the JI network went about their activities and lured its members into following some of the fatwa (decrees) imposed by fanatical leaders such as Osama bin Laden, the head of Al-Qaeda." The special report would also have the men confessing their association with Hambali, the top JI leader who is said to have links with al-Qaeda, and Imam Samudra and Mukhlas, both of whom were responsible for the Bali bombings which killed 202 people in October 2002. The interviews, done by the TV3 crew, were held at the Indonesian police headquarters in Jakarta on March 11. Amran said he was "disillusioned with the organisation when he found their bombs had killed children, women and many Muslims". Nasir, who was arrested in April last year, said he regretted his involvement in the organisation and wanted to return to society.
Posted by: Dan Darling || 04/01/2004 12:46:12 AM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:


Philippines arrests Turkish JI members
The Bureau of Immigration (B.I.) said Thursday that it has arrested in Cotabato City four Arabic teachers from Turkey on suspicion of having ties to the Jemaah Islamiah (JI) regional terror network. Arrested were Ismael Kocabiyik, Alpaslan Gul, Ahmed Kaya, and Mansour Omercikoglu. Immigration officials said the Turks are all natives of Istanbul. Immigration agents reportedly arrested the four at the Eeman Institute where they are teaching Arabic studies. Reports said the school is owned by Zamzmin Ampatuan, executive director of the Office of Muslim Affairs.

Ampatuan said the immigration agents were armed with arrest warrants authorizing the detention of the four for "alleged links to the J.I." Ampatuan reportedly said he does not believe the charge. "That is not true. These people are peace-loving educators who have been helping us run our educational institute," a wire report quoted him as saying. Reports added that security officials have said they are monitoring the activities of certain foreign Islamic missionaries who they fear could be helping recruit members to Islamic militant groups such as al-Qaeda or the J.I., a Southeast Asia-based network blamed for the Bali blasts that killed 202 people in 2002.
Posted by: Dan Darling || 04/01/2004 12:22:26 AM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:


Abu Sayyaf sez bombings will continue
AN Islamic militant group has warned the Philippines of a fresh wave of terror attacks in the capital despite the arrest of six of its members linked to a foiled bomb plot. "The queue is long, we will not run out of bombers," the Philippine Daily Inquirer quoted Abu Sayyaf leader Khadaffy Janjalani as saying. "This is our global contribution to fulfill our obligation in defending Islam," another Abu Sayyaf leader, Abu Soliman, told the Inquirer in a separate interview. The government says Soliman is the alias of Jainal Antel Sali, a senior Abu Sayyaf leader. The group has mounted a bombing and kidnapping campaign in the southern Philippines.

The daily said Soliman issued several demands - the release of detained comrades as well as Islamic militants detained by the United States in Guantanamo, Cuba, the expulsion of Christians from all Muslim lands in the Philippines and foreign troops from the Arabian peninsula.
That would seem to imply a similar obligation to expel all Muslims from Europe, North America, most of Asia, all of Australia, and most of Africa, wouldn't it?
Military spokesman Lieutenant-General Daniel Lucero dismissed the Abu Sayyaf claim. Commenting on the Abu Sayyaf's capability to mount "shaheed" or martyrdom operations in the Philippines, Lucero said one of the detained alleged bombers told police investigators that "they have not reached that level of ideological sophistication." He said the Abu Sayyaf, despite evidence that "they had received financial support" from the al-Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiah (JI) groups in the past, had been mostly engaged in kidnappings and extortion. However, he conceded it was "possible" that the Abu Sayyaf might be acting in return for aid from the JI or al-Qaeda.
I thought Robot said they were getting training from Indonesian terrorist chiefs, a clear reference to JI. I doubt that give away that kind of training for free, meaning that Abu Sayyaf has to keep snuffing kufr in return for all of the how-to courses.
US Special Forces advisers have been helping Filipino troops root out Abu Sayyaf units in the Muslim-populated southern Philippines, and Lucero said this could be forcing the guerrillas into relocating their sphere of operations. "Because of the relentless operations in Basilan and Sulu (island groups in the south) there seems to be an environment of fear among members," he said.
Posted by: Dan Darling || 04/01/2004 12:18:38 AM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:


Iraq-Jordan
Fallujah in the Crosshairs
Severly EFL - From Wretchard at Belmontclub. As the man says, read the whole thing.

Directly after four civilian contractors were murdered and mutilated in Fallujah, in the heart of the Sunni triangle, the US military apparently strung a low key but effective cordon around the town. The townsfolk rapidly demanded its lifting. The Iraqi Civil Defense Corps, based in the city, issued this cryptic statement:

"An agreement has been negotiated with the occupation forces to lift the siege of Fallujah and to withdraw. We are hoping you will cooperate to protect Fallujah and guarantee its security," the message said.

The cordon has if anything, been tightened. "U.S. troops, however, remained outside the city Thursday, and commanders said they would act ’at the time and place of our choosing.’’’ The US military defended its decision not to send troops into Fallujah immediately. Instead, the forces available blocked off the access routes. Fallujah is bounded in the West by a river and four major roads lead in and out of the town.

SNIP

Q of GEN. Kimmitt: Can I just ask one quick follow-up. Just does it not send out a rather dangerous message that these people can get away with this, pretty much do whatever they want? I mean, I was in Fallujah today and people were saying, "Yeah, the Americans were scared to come back in." Does that not send out a bad message of tolerance of violence?

GEN. KIMMITT: Ask them after the Americans have come back in.

If you have any sense at all, Generals that whisper or talk in an steady, even tone should scare the hell out of you. .

The rest is tactics. The Marines have long studied Military Operations in Urban Terrain (MOUT). They will put snipers in dominant overwatch; use the road network to divide up the town into zones by posting the intersections; they will build EPW cages outside the town; they will put persistent aerial surveillance aloft; there will be a blanket of electronic surveillance and electronic jamming over the town; they will map out the operation to a room-by-room detail. Then they will lop off bits of Fallujah one slice at a time.

SNIP

The deliberate, even cold-blooded approach by the Marines makes this incident the anti-Mogadishu. The tactics employed against the Rangers in the Blackhawk Down incident relied on the belief that Americans could be reflexively trapped into defending unfavorable positions in attempts to recover bodies. The Anti-Coalition Forces probably felt sure that taunting Americans over the media would produce the desired impulsiveness. As the minutes lengthened into hours and the Marines responded with icy professionalism, the enemy may have come the unpleasant realization that this was not the former administration and that other still more unwelcome surprises were in store for them.

The worst time to go hunting tangos is when you are really, really pissed off. Mistakes will be made and you can easily end up in an ambush yourself. While I was/am as mad as anyone after yesterday’s events, I think the slow methodically approach is the better. I like to think of in terms of a glacier - slow and ponderous but absolutely crushing and no hope of stopping it.
Posted by: Doc8404 || 04/01/2004 10:47:20 PM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:


Israel-Palestine
Many in Islamic World Angered by Public Displays of Yassin’s Blasted Head in Arab Media
In this article, we wish to focus on an issue that has angered many throughout the Islamic world regarding the Arab media coverage of Yassin’s assassination. There are many angles to the international media coverage of this tragedy, but we wish to shed light particularly on the Arab media’s portrayal of the killing of Yassin. .... Following the assassination, pictures of Yassin’s broken wheelchair smothered with blood were shown all over the world. ....

However, and quite paradoxically, some Arab written media outlets chose to share with their readers yet another image of the recent killing. To the amazement of many, what was not explicitly shown on Western media channels – was shown openly in various Arab newspapers. .... Words cannot explain the horrific feeling one gets when observing these pictures. The brains of a dignified leader are shown poured out of his skull, and one can sense nothing else but shame and grief when observing them. .... When publishing those photos, the editors didn’t have Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and his relatives in mind – and that is what makes a difference and is so annoying. The lack of respect in this case adds yet an entire new dimension to the tragedy. ....

So if Islam and its followers regard "respect" as such an important and essential part of life as well as death – why did Arab editors ignore this value when they approved (and perhaps encouraged?) the publication of Yassin’s horrific dead body? ...

Maybe Arab media decision-makers should also stand up and make a statement against the portrayal of such pictures? It should be noted that the publication of Yassin’s corpse triggered a chorus of outrage not only across the Arab world but also on the international front. .... Moreover, Arab newspapers serve as a mirror of Arab society, reflecting the essence of its culture and beliefs. Therefore, when deciding what to depict in various Arab media outlets, planners and decision-makers should remember that the images and the manner in which they are represented is how the West and the international community as a whole view and perceive the Arab world.
Posted by: Mike Sylwester || 04/01/2004 10:39:54 PM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:


Africa: North
Egypt Arrests Four Christians for Threatening National Unity, Social Peace and National Security
Four Christians have been arrested in Sharm El-Sheikh in Egypt after police found that they had Bibles and Christian music tapes in their possession, according to reports received by the Jubilee Campaign. The four Christians - Peter Nady Kamel, Ishaq Dawoud Yassa, John Adel and Andrew Sa’id - all University students at Cairo or Minya Universities. They had gone together to the beach resort town of Sharm El-Sheikh, by the Red Sea, for a Christian retreat and stayed at a hotel. They were arrested in their hotel rooms by local police at 9 a.m on January 26th 2004. Their rooms were searched and all their possessions confiscated. The four Christians have been charged with forming a group that threatens the national unity, social peace and national security. They appeared before the District Prosecutor on January 29 and March 28. Their next appearance before the Prosecutor is scheduled for May 8 and their detention has been extended at least till that date. .... Jubilee Campaign’s Researcher and Parliamentary Officer, Wilfred Wong, said: ".... We are campaigning for the release of the four detained Egyptian Christians. It is unusual for Egyptian Christians to get into trouble just for having Bibles and Christian tapes in their possession and these arrests signify an increasing willingness by the police to detain Christians on the slightest pretext."
Posted by: Mike Sylwester || 04/01/2004 7:36:46 PM || Comments || Link || [1 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Gentlemen, I think it's time for a Crusade...
Posted by: steve d. || 04/01/2004 21:11 Comments || Top||

#2  Can you even imagine the Hue and Cry™ from CAIR, et al, if the West imposed 1% of the bullshit on Mooslims as they impose upon non-Islamic people. RoP = Hypocrisy.
Posted by: .com || 04/01/2004 21:21 Comments || Top||

#3  It would be more appropriate for the US taxpayer to quit paying Egypt the annual $2B bribe to not attack Israel. Another legacy from Jimmy Carter.
Posted by: RWV || 04/01/2004 21:45 Comments || Top||

#4  [Troll droppings deleted]
Posted by: Fred TROLL || 04/01/2004 22:04 Comments || Top||

#5  Piss off, Boris.
Posted by: Fred || 04/01/2004 22:06 Comments || Top||

#6  Sounds like profiling to me. Where's the cry of outrage from the LLL?
Posted by: GK || 04/01/2004 22:22 Comments || Top||



#9  Fred Pruitt censors truth while Americans die in Iraq on basis of lies.
Posted by: Fred TROLL || 04/01/2004 22:04 Comments || Top||


Afghanistan/South Asia
Pakistani Court Sentences Terrorists Who Attacked Missionary School
An anti-terrorism court judge delivered death sentences to three convicts and life imprisonment to another four for a terrorist attack on a missionary school in Murree in May 2002, on Wednesday. Anti-terrorism Court Judge Safdar Hussain Malik, handing down the sentences at Adiala Jail due to security reasons, gave death to Attaullah, Saifur Rehman and Abu Bakr, while Abdul Qadeer, Muhammad Izhar, Muhammad Asif and Saifur Rehman were given life sentences. Those given life terms were also fined Rs 100,000 and their movable and immovable properties have been confiscated. The convicted men would undergo a further one-year imprisonment if they failed to pay the fine. The judge acquitted Tabriq Ali, another accused in the case. The school attack left five people, including two staff members and a watchman, dead. The court acquitted Saifur Rehman and Abu Bakr in the terrorist attack on a church in the diplomatic enclave on March 17, 2002, in which six people, including two American diplomats and a terrorist Sarfraz, were killed.
Posted by: Mike Sylwester || 04/01/2004 7:25:34 PM || Comments || Link || [1 views] Top|| File under:

#1  [Troll droppings deleted]
Posted by: Fred TROLL || 04/01/2004 22:21 Comments || Top||

#2  No one from Boris' jackbooted goon squad would know the truth if left tread marks across their chest.
Posted by: GK || 04/01/2004 22:26 Comments || Top||

#3  Fred Pruitt censors truth while Americans die in Iraq on basis of lies.
Posted by: Patrick || 04/01/2004 22:17 Comments || Top||

#4  Fred Pruitt censors truth while Americans die in Iraq on basis of lies.
Posted by: Patrick || 04/01/2004 22:17 Comments || Top||

#5  Fred Pruitt censors truth while Americans die in Iraq on basis of lies.
Posted by: Patrick TROLL || 04/01/2004 22:21 Comments || Top||


Africa: North
New nuke challenge emerging in Algeria; ChiComs helped
From Geostrategy-Direct....
Algeria could become the latest nuclear proliferation challenge for the United States.
Just what we need, another challenge...
According to sources, Algeria has acquired the capability of completing the nuclear cycle through its own installations and components. This means that Algeria would be able to produce bomb-grade plutonium.
So who do they need to protect themselves from now? Or are they looking into marketing, like the Paks?
Algeria is no stranger to nuclear weapons. Between 1960 and 1965 France conducted 14 underground nuclear tests at two separate locations in the Algerian desert. Most of these sub-surface sites are still intact, sources said.
What does that mean? Must be the support infrastructure is my guess. I sure as hell hope that the test sites are!
Algeria’s nuclear program involves about 2,000 trained personnel, many of them engineers. In July 1998, a Spanish defense intelligence report said Algeria has the capability of starting a nuclear weapons program. The U.S. intelligence community has not publicly confirmed the report.
We can say no more.
The Al Salam nuclear reactor and a Hot Cell Laboratory near the city of Birine, about 250 kilometers south of Algiers, have served as the nerve center for Algeria’s nuclear program. A tunnel connects the two facilities.
Ah, the infamous tunnels.
Al Salam is believed capable of producing as much as six kilograms of weapons-grade plutonium per year. The methods for producing the plutonium include irradiating natural uranium in the core of the reactor, increasing the reloads of low-enriched uranium fuel and switching to natural uranium fuel. Western diplomatic sources said the United States has been quietly advising Algeria to open its nuclear facilities to inspection. The sources said Algeria has acquired a large nuclear infrastructure that could be converted to assemble nuclear weapons.
Sounds like they are already there.
The United States and Spain have been monitoring Algeria’s nuclear program for the last 15 years. U.S. spy satellites have tracked the construction of nuclear facilities at Birine. So far, the sources said, the United States has not determined whether Algeria was a client of the nuclear smuggling network headed by Pakistani government scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan.
Will be interesting to know if the network extended to Algeria.
Al Salam is said to house a 15-megawatt thermal heavy water reactor purchased from Argentina. A reactor this size, using low-enriched uranium fuel for irradiation purposes, could produce several kilograms of weapons-grade plutonium per year, the sources said. The United States has also been following nuclear cooperation between Algeria and China. In 1997, China agreed to provide Algeria with a radioisotope production laboratory to produce Cobalt-60.
IIRC, Co-60 is mainly used for nuclear medicine.
Beijing was also believed to have discussed the sale of a heavy water production plant. U.S. officials have been concerned that Algeria will soon acquire several high-performance computers needed to design nuclear warheads. The computers, with a capability of 8.5 billion theoretical operations per second, could also be used to simulate the aerodynamics of ballistic missiles.
Fred, maybe if they disarm, you could get one of their computers cheap for a major server upgrade!
Posted by: Alaska Paul || 04/01/2004 4:53:20 PM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  LOL!
"8.5 billion theoretical operations per second"

Theorectially these will be mathematical computations... GeoStrategy Direct - Dot Com can help you with your computer terminology. I was one of the very first Cray programmers (even studied vector programming at the feet of Dr Cray hisownself!), have programmed on several other vector / parallel computing systems. I even do mathematical computations on my laptop. I can help you. Honest! My fee will correlate with your ability to pay - I'm an equal opportunity rapist consultant. Post your learned reply here - I'll see it. Lol! Wotta buncha 'puter maroons!

Thx, AP - I need the laugh cuz the idea of Algerians getting a nuke is beyond my capacity, today, for comprehending extreme insanity!
Posted by: .com || 04/01/2004 17:14 Comments || Top||

#2  Salafist Group for Preaching, Combat, and Mushroom Clouds
Posted by: Frank G || 04/01/2004 17:21 Comments || Top||

#3  Now that's just plain mean Frank G. Tiny mushroom clouds.
Posted by: Shipman || 04/01/2004 18:05 Comments || Top||

#4  .com---If the Algerians do get a missile, the guidence system and the missile will be outsourced, or if it is homebuilt, when it launches, it will fly like Gandalf's Smaug fireworks rocket.. I am more concerned with their accumulation of Plut more than anything else.
Posted by: Alaska Paul || 04/01/2004 18:21 Comments || Top||

#5  Somehow, I get this feeling that the Phrench had more of a hand in this than those Commies in China.
Posted by: Bomb-a-rama || 04/01/2004 18:24 Comments || Top||


Iraq-Jordan
Fallujah mourns Yassin? Reunite them.
I originally posted the above-linked gem of a photo on my no-traffic newbie blog, but figured y’all would be much more likely to see it here. This needs exposure.

MOAB time, methinks.
Posted by: Puddle Pirate || 04/01/2004 2:10:53 PM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:


Israel-Palestine
Sharon: Israel Might Move Against Arafat
Israel might move against Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, who has been confined to his West Bank headquarters for more than two years, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Thursday. Israel TV reported that Sharon made the comment in a series of interviews he gave for the upcoming Jewish holiday of Passover. The interviews are to appear in Israeli newspapers and on radio and TV stations Friday. Sharon said that Arafat cannot remain where he is forever, and it is not impossible that Israel will act against him in the future, Israel TV and another reporter present in the interviews said. The TV did not immediately broadcast excerpts of the interview. Several months ago Israel’s Cabinet declared that Arafat is responsible for Palestinian violence and should be "removed," and several Cabinet ministers have called frequently for his expulsion or killing.
Posted by: Lux || 04/01/2004 2:20:00 PM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Khan Noonian Singh: "Kill him, Terrell, now."
Posted by: Bomb-a-rama || 04/01/2004 14:57 Comments || Top||

#2  Let's roll, IDF!
Posted by: Jen || 04/01/2004 15:04 Comments || Top||

#3  The sands of time are running out for one of the most vile specimens of the 20th Century.

I really hope he sees the Hellfire missile bearing down on him, just before he gets the real thing.
Posted by: Tony (UK) || 04/01/2004 15:19 Comments || Top||

#4  Amen.
Posted by: .com || 04/01/2004 15:34 Comments || Top||

#5  Vegas just moved the odds line.

If anything major happens over the Passover Holiday, then Arafat has a date with a Bulldozer.
Posted by: Daniel King || 04/01/2004 17:48 Comments || Top||


Iraq-Jordan
Unknown group claims responsibility for Fallujah killings
A previously unknown group claimed the gruesome killing of four US contractors in Fallujah, western Iraq, in revenge for Israel's assassination of Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.
You knew it was only a matter of time.
"This is a gift from the people of Fallujah to the people of Palestine and the family of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin who was assassinated by the criminal Zionists," said in the statement from the "Brigades of Martyr Ahmed Yassin." "We advise the US forces to withdraw from Iraq and we advise the families of the American soldiers and the contractors not to come to Iraq," said the statement obtained by AFP.
How about we just carpet bomb you from 25 thousand feet?
The statement, entitled "Fallujah, the graveyard of the Americans," claimed the group's fighters killed "members of the Central Intelligence Agency and the Zionist Mossad," referring to Israel's intelligence agency. It said the "blind violence" of Fallujah residents resulted from an increasing hatred of the Americans and was also in response to the "US aggression, raids on mosques and homes, the arrests, the torture of clerics and the terrorizing of women and children."
You forgot the baby ducks.
Yassin, the spiritual leader of the hardline Palestinian militant group, was killed last month in an Israeli air strike as he left a Gaza City mosque. The four US security contractors were killed in an ambush in Fallujah on Wednesday as they were escorting a truck carrying food supplies to a nearby military base. Two of their charred bodies were then dismembered and paraded by angry residents.
Screw the calm, reasoned, measured response. Herd them all into the desert, shoot anyone who resists, level the town and sow the earth with salt.
Posted by: Steve || 04/01/2004 1:19:24 PM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Yassin. Pfeh. Yeah right. If you want anyone to believe you, you hafta announce your intentions and the beneficiary in advance. Send details of your next operation to Centcom before you do it and then we'll buy your shit.

And I advise you to dig a very very deep hole and then pull the dirt in behind you.
Posted by: .com || 04/01/2004 14:47 Comments || Top||

#2  "We advise the US forces to withdraw from Iraq and we advise the families of the American soldiers and the contractors not to come to Iraq."

Oh yeah? We we advise you to go fuck yourselves you sick pricks. And by the way, get yourself on Allah's good side because you are going to meet him in Hell. Soon.
Posted by: Tibor || 04/01/2004 15:14 Comments || Top||

#3  These contractors made a detour through Fallujah, so this "Yassin Brigade" never really planned it out. More Muslim Bullshit to try to confuse the "infidels"

Names are just names, random groups are just making up new names every time they attack someone, so instead of hitting back at the bums and thugs in the neighborhood, we're out looking for some "brigade" that nobody knows about. I'm sure our commanders know better, these Iraqi's are wanna-be warriors.
Posted by: CobraCommander || 04/01/2004 15:56 Comments || Top||

#4  They sure do like ol' Yassin over in Fallujah. A lot.

Scumbags.
Posted by: Puddle Pirate || 04/01/2004 16:03 Comments || Top||

#5  Just to be spiteful, I suggest that after opening up a can of whoop ass on Fallujah, a 2000 lb. JDAM with Old Glory painted on it be released near where Arafart is holed up in Ramallah and guided appropriately to fall right into the exact center of his compound.
Posted by: Bomb-a-rama || 04/01/2004 16:49 Comments || Top||

#6  They are always so fast to think up new names for brigades, aren't they?

When will we see the "Radical Faction of the Yassin Brigades"?
Posted by: True German Ally || 04/01/2004 18:05 Comments || Top||

#7  (obligatory Life of Brian reference)

Will that be the Judean People's Front or the People's Front of Judea? Or the Judean Popular People's Front?

Suicide Squad Leader: We are the Judean People's Front crack suicide squad! Suicide squad, attack! [they all stab themselves] That showed 'em, huh? [they fall over stone dead]
Posted by: OldSpook || 04/01/2004 19:25 Comments || Top||

#8  Old Spook, LOL! (Love Life of Brian quotes, especially when they fit!).
This "Yassin Brigade" thing is just pure Muslim BULLSHIT.
They'd never heard of that guy until last week.
They always have some "reason" to kill people in "revenge"--as if it made sense....
Yeah, right! Maybe to Dimocrats, the EU and Human Rights Watch.
Posted by: Jen || 04/01/2004 20:12 Comments || Top||


Iraqi Criminal Investigation set for Fallujah
An angry Paul Bremer, the US overseer in Iraq, blasted the killing of nine civilian and military personnel in western Iraq as "despicable and inexcusable" and vowed that their deaths "will not go unpunished." Addressing 479 new graduates at the Iraqi police academy here, Bremer said "the acts we have seen (Wednesday) are despicable and inexcusable. They violate the tenets of all religions, including Islam as well as the foundations of civilized society.
He should be addressing U. S. Marines not Iraqi Clouseaus
"These murders are a painful outrage for us in the coalition but they will not derail the march toward stability and democracy in Iraq," he told the graduation ceremony. "Their deaths will not go unpunished."
It better not nearly as painful for us as the response is for Fallujah
Speaking at the same police graduation ceremony Thursday, Iraqi Interior Minister Nuri Badran pledged that his forces would do their best to find the killers and bring them to justice.
He should have told them there was still a war on and this was not a Police matter but a USMC matter. Best to know the line and stay on the correct side because Police always come up short against Marines.
"What happened in Fallujah is a flagrant criminal, terrorist act targeted at innocent people," he said.
Wrong again, Bremer Badran [Badran, Bremer, what’s the diference?], it was an act of war, plain and simple and it deserves a response from warriors not law enforcement officers.
Asked whether he planned to send Iraqi security forces into Fallujah, a bastion of die-hard opponents to the US-led occupation, Badran told AFP: "Forces will be sent there. We don’t know when, but we are planning to do that."
Did this guy work for Dick Clarke?
He said the police needed to build a very efficient, mobile force to go after the elusive insurgents, who are launching hit-and-run raids.
Why? The Marines have armor, aircraft and footwear. They can be effective as well as efficient and mobile. And they won’t wait around for a plan everybody has aproved.
US Marines have been relieving soldiers of the army’s 82nd Airborne Division in the restive Fallujah area for the past two weeks, mounting almost daily patrols to gather intelligence on the rebels and try to win the support of the local population.
The one who needs to be relieved is Bremer for allowing a situation in which anybody could even imagine that this is an acceptable response. This is smelling like Mogadishu II, New and Improved. With response by unmotivated, underarmed native peace keepers.
Posted by: Mr. Davis || 04/01/2004 1:13:49 PM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Let's wait and see what the response is before we condemn Bremer. Btw, 2 things... Bremer doesn't control the military response in Iraq if I'm not mistaken... he just controls the CPA. And 2, I think overall Bremer is doing a pretty good job overall.
Posted by: Damn_Proud_American || 04/01/2004 13:29 Comments || Top||

#2  Mr Davis just how is the Mogadishu II? You comments evokes a situation where the US pulls out. The US cannot and will not pull - either in a Skerry or Bush admin..
The only similarity is that the terrorists believe by acting like this we would pull out just like in somalia. These acts will bring only more death and suffering to these pussy ass sunni arabs.
Posted by: Dan || 04/01/2004 14:17 Comments || Top||

#3  Bremer doesn't control the military response in Iraq if I'm not mistaken..

That having been said, Bremer shouldn't be saying anything about bringing the killers "to justice", as it isn't difficult to figure out just what he means by that. Justice in a place like Fallujah means that trial by jury, conviction, and imprisonment isn't really all that practical or desirable.
Posted by: Bomb-a-rama || 04/01/2004 15:14 Comments || Top||

#4  Mr D - I love righteous indignation - and I share yours completely!

Bremer should've deferred to the CA Military when the question came. He should do so in all FUTURE press conferences, as well. He is an administrator, not a warrior. He is in charge of administration of Iraq until the handover. After that day I dont' know if he is supposed to leave or what.

All security questions should be directed to the security people - the CA Military Command. Sanchez. Let's see if Sanchez "gets it" or not. If he hasn't got the stones to recommend a hard boyz response to Dubya, then he should retire his ass to Golden Acres. If he does, then say so, plan it, execute. Rinse. Repeat.

I said this elsewhere, but it bears repeating:
In the Arab mind the time for Dire Revenge is open-ended. If it takes a month to come up with what Old Spook so clearly described here on RB yesterday, no problem - the Arabs don't share our sense of time. We all talk about "cause -> effect" and how they don't get it. It's true. But subconsciously we also have an unspoken timeframe attached: we expect action within a very narrow window of time. The Arabs don't have this Short Attention Span - they believe revenge can be extracted centuries after the fact. The OBL obsession with the Crusades should be sufficient proof of that statement.

So, Sanchez & Co, check out Old Spook's post. Read it. Learn it. Live it. Love it. Get it ON - or get out of the way.

On FoxNews Gen. Vallely (Ret) is saying he expects the response within the next 24-48 hrs. I hope he's right. He sez we must set an example and it has to be one that will be understood. He discounts the notion that we are short on "boots" to do the job. I happen to agree with him, but who really knows.

We shall see - and I hope the Mil Cmd is smart enough to do it right and with extreme prejudice.
Posted by: .com || 04/01/2004 16:08 Comments || Top||

#5  .com - good point about the arab view of Dire Revenge™ time. We are an impatient people, but like apuppy, if you wait too long, the punishment is linked with the act in their tiny little brains. If they wait til the weekend to smack Fallujah, it'll be too late. I'd do it during Friday prayers. F*&k their sensitivities
Posted by: Frank G || 04/01/2004 16:42 Comments || Top||

#6  Dan,

My comment on Mogadishu II is based on civilian interference in military operations and with enemy personnel not being held swiftly to account in a military fashion. This situation is even worse as while we all agree the US will not pull out of Iraq, a flaccid response will only invite additional attacks.

Unity of command is important in providing a consistent message to the Iraqi people about what we will tolerate. This is something about which civilian and military personnel should not be issuing contradictory statements. We look divided and weak. Too often when we are divided, the party urging the lower level of action prevails out of inertia. That is what happened in Mogadishu and Bremer's comments make me fear it will happen here.

The lack of consistency is further demonstrated this week where we have the U. S. shutting down a news paper yet possibly not going after these attackers forcefully.

It is also sort of ridiculous to expect the Iraqi police and judiciary whose lives are in danger just by wearing the uniform and going to the police station and who reside and have families in the city to address an attack of this magnitude using the law enforcement model. This is not a crime. It is an act of war which should be dealt with in that fashion promptly and unequivocly by military personnel unencumbered by armchair quarterbacks (like me as well as Bremer).
Posted by: Mr. Davis || 04/01/2004 16:47 Comments || Top||

#7  The only law enforcement activity that should be required is a post-JDAM DNA analysis of the resultant mush to see if there happened to be anyone interesting amongst the culprits.
Posted by: RWV || 04/01/2004 17:35 Comments || Top||

#8  Let the Marines do what Marines do best.

Do a Sherman on thier ass.
Posted by: Raptor || 04/01/2004 17:45 Comments || Top||

#9  I'll say what I said yesterday...this was a failure of command, or the Rules of Engagement foistered on the Marines. You can beat your breast all you want about how the Maines will kick ass...but the ass kicking needed to be Yesterday, during the incident.

That's the truth of it.
Posted by: Traveller || 04/01/2004 20:23 Comments || Top||


US marines in Fallujah quick to show they are not a soft touch
BEFORE the US marines arrived just over a week ago, many in Fallujah had been led to believe that their new occupiers were planning to use a "softer touch" than the US army forces that preceded them. Unlike the soldiers of the 82nd Airborne Division, the marines had received cultural training before arriving in Iraq. Some had taken intensive Arabic language courses.

But on 26 March, two days after they arrived, the marines were caught in an intense firefight with armed militants that set a much different tone. One marine was killed and seven were injured. Five Iraqis, including a freelance ABC News cameraman, were killed. The battle led to a show of force by the marines that many residents say was unlike any in nearly a year of occupation by the United States. At least eight marines have been killed in the area in a two-week period. On Tuesday, the marines deployed tanks and armoured vehicles to block the main exits and entrances to Fallujah for the fourth day. The deployment forced thousands of motorists off the motorway and on to dirt tracks, where traffic moved slowly under the watchful eyes of soldiers [sic]crouching in the sand behind their guns or atop military vehicles. The guns of tanks on the motorway were trained on the al-Askari district. On Monday night, according to residents, the marines patrolled the neighbourhood using an Arabic speaker to warn residents through a bullhorn against harbouring insurgents. The area would become a battlefield unless the "terrorists" left, the voice added. Residents also reported door-to-door house raids by the marines looking for weapons and suspected insurgents on Monday and Tuesday. "If they find more than one adult male in any house, they arrest one of them," claimed a resident, Khaled Jamaili, 26. "Those marines are destroying us. They are leaning very hard on Fallujah."
I'm hoping that this is just the beginning...
The marines’ commander, Lieutenant General James Conway, has said the "softer touch" would be applied only when the insurgency ends. "You will see that soft approach when we can walk the streets feeling safe," Lt Gen Conway said last week. "Essentially, our mission is to create stabilisation and security."

Senior US military commanders say the insurgents and their supporters in Fallujah are a tiny minority and most city residents are tired of the violence. But support for the insurgency appears to still be strong in sections of the city. Fighters in the working-class area of al-Askari are routinely referred to as mujahideen, or holy fighters. Americans are referred to as "Zionists" or "Jews", words many Arabs use to refer to Israelis. "We are all suffering from what the Americans are doing to us, but that doesn’t take away anything from our pride in the resistance," said Saadi Hamadi, 24, a graduate of Arabic studies from Baghdad’s al-Mustansiriyah University. "To us, the Americans are just like the Israelis," he added.
We liberated Iraq from the Sunni Triangle, it seems. Now we've got to conquer the Sunni Triangle. Let's get to it. Lots of time to be nice when the hard boyz are all dead.
Posted by: tipper || 04/01/2004 10:36:49 AM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Army soft and Marine soft are two entirely different things. As these butt-weavils will soon discover.
Posted by: Dragon Fly || 04/01/2004 10:43 Comments || Top||

#2  "To us, the Americans are just like the Israelis," he added

Which is to say, able to whip Arab ass at will.
Posted by: Robert Crawford || 04/01/2004 10:43 Comments || Top||

#3  BEFORE the US marines arrived just over a week ago, many in Fallujah had been led to believe that their new occupiers were planning to use a "softer touch" than the US army forces that preceded them.

Do these people ever read the news?
Posted by: BH || 04/01/2004 10:48 Comments || Top||

#4  A suggestion from a commenter at Blackfive:

How about a remote controlled SUV with tinted windows, cruising around Fallujah. When it is attacked stop it. When they go to withdraw the "victims" detonate the 1000 lb bomb hidden inside. Mobile Mini MOAB.

What a great idea.
Posted by: Bomb-a-rama || 04/01/2004 10:53 Comments || Top||

#5  It's reported that there is a calm before the storm in Fallujah today. No rush, but I hope we kick some serious stink'n ass.
Posted by: CobraCommander || 04/01/2004 10:58 Comments || Top||

#6  Time to turn the town into a pig farm. Spread pig feces around and on any mujahideen.

All your graves are belong pig.
Posted by: Lucky || 04/01/2004 11:00 Comments || Top||

#7  The Carthage solution is looking better and better.

And anybody in Fallujah who thinks having the occupation troops switched from Army to Marines is a GOOD thing is crazier than a shithouse rat.
Posted by: mojo || 04/01/2004 11:04 Comments || Top||

#8  How about everyone in Fallujah has to have an identity card with GPS. Anyone without a card or who mutilates a card is arrested (oh the humilation). Camcorders in secret places. Anyone with a weapon is arrested. Anyone who was seen attacking the remotely controlled van is arrested.
Posted by: mhw || 04/01/2004 11:25 Comments || Top||

#9  Blockade, surround and barricade the city. Cut off the electricity and water. Set up a PA system telling the Fallujians to give up those who ambushed, killed and desecrated the Americans within 48 hours. Then close the noose. One block at a time. Anyone leaving is captured. Or killed. Once the city is empty... LEVEL IT! Then see if Jimmy Dean is interested in outsourcing a pig processing plant!
Posted by: Jack Deth || 04/01/2004 11:52 Comments || Top||

#10  ...Supposedly the Marine Air-Ground Museum at Quantico used to have a letter on display that I think explains the situation: During the Korean War, a Marine unit relieved a Army unit, and proceeded to dig in. That night, the Chinese came across and were, of course, torn to shreds. A little while after the Chniese pulled back, a flare was launched from their side, revealing two Chinese one officer and one enlisted man carrying a white flag coming across to the Marine lines. The Marine commander went out to meet them, where the Chinese officer handed them a letter, saluted, and walked away. Supposedly, the letter - typewritten in marginal english - said :

We humbly apologize for attacking Marine positions, we thought you were the Army.

Now, it may not be true (Full Disclosure, BTW - I'm a Marine brat and retired USAF, but respect all the services)but it does sum up the difference in attitudes quite nicely.

Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski || 04/01/2004 11:55 Comments || Top||

#11  I like the mini-MOAB idea. Sweet and clean. Oh and take out that bridge. The people who need work can work on rebuilding it.

And it sounds like Saadi Hamadi was one of the people cheering it on. I wonder how long it took the reporter to find someone with a quote like that?
Posted by: CrazyFool || 04/01/2004 12:00 Comments || Top||

#12  Carthage solution
Yes, Carthage. Let those who are innocent leave. Destroy those who stay. Level the town. Salt the earth where it stood and piss on it for good measure.
Posted by: anymouse || 04/01/2004 12:22 Comments || Top||

#13  Jack Deth -- Jimmy Dean died last year.
Posted by: mhw || 04/01/2004 12:23 Comments || Top||

#14  mhw -- He's talking about Jimmy Dean brand sausage. If not them, then Bob Evans may be willing.
Posted by: Robert Crawford || 04/01/2004 12:38 Comments || Top||

#15  I don't think there will be anything done other than a large patrol rounding up some troublemakers in the middle of the night. If they go in the daylight, a firefight will ensue, 1 Marine will be killed several wounded and 8-12 "civilian" killed.
Posted by: Yosemite Sam || 04/01/2004 12:45 Comments || Top||

#16  Besides ID they should get inplanted or injected RFID's!

Let the microchip stay with them for life!
Posted by: 3dc || 04/01/2004 12:54 Comments || Top||

#17  Coalition forces will respond," Kimmitt told a news conference. "They are coming back and they are going to hunt down the people responsible for this bestial act.

"It will be at a time and a place of our choosing. It will be methodical, it will be precise and it will be overwhelming."
Posted by: Liberalhawk || 04/01/2004 12:59 Comments || Top||

#18  Kimmit,

Want to bet?
Posted by: Mr. Davis || 04/01/2004 13:21 Comments || Top||

#19  Re: #17

Good. We have pictures, after all. Clear out the town, make 'em all walk past checkpoints where anyone who was at the car or that bridge gets arrested. The others can leave (DON'T come back!), going wherever they want to.

Then level the goddamned city. Erase it, completely and utterly, from the face of the planet...

Hence, the Carthage solution.
Posted by: mojo || 04/01/2004 13:25 Comments || Top||

#20  kids, why is the power still on in Fallujah? Dont they issue bolt cutters in the corps?

soft touch? - marines? Havent these ignorant mutts ever heard of halls of montezuma, shores of tripoli, Iwo jima, saipan, okinawa, chosin, Hue, khe sahn ?

Does the phrase "no greater friend, no worse enemy" have any meaning to these people?

It makes you want to drop leaflets to point out the war history of the corps, along with the average marines kill ratio.

Heres my take on "how to suppress Saddamist Jihadis':

step 1. Power off.
step 2. Water off. mark all remaining wells with Globle and Eagle graphics with words " Fresh water brought to you by xxx battalion US MARINES" position Abrams tanks at all wells. Test weaponry on the top of each hour. Flybys of gunships, ac-130 spooky gunships with demonstrations thrice daily.


step 3. Partition city with barbwire fences and gun towers. introduce locals to the 50 caliber perimeter defense device.(Ma Deuce - call your office)
step 4. establish camps outside of town, just for grins call them 'guantanmos'.

step 5. Arrest all males over 15 and under 40. picture, fingerprint and DNA each one. give them a glossy for the folks back home. Explain how we can and will track them from this point forward, or as we like to say, "you can run but you cant hide". Explain how president of the US is from a state that actually enforces the death penalty,so if he'll kill his own people, what chance have you got hadji? for the guys who cooperate, give them a sign around their neck that says "florida" for the tough guys, hang a sign around their neck that says "tel aviv". Point out to the others that we have options on where we send people next, their cooperation will be noted in their files.

step 6. evacuate block where atrocity occured.

step 7. level the block. in full view of civilians. invite al-jizzera to film. make popcorn.

step 8. wash, rinse repeat in wider circumfrence to former city limits.

step 9. build mcdonalds or walmart on ruins.
step 10. rename fallujah "orlando".
step 11. begin asking "say, wheres that fallujah place at anyway...."
Posted by: Frank Martin || 04/01/2004 13:57 Comments || Top||

#21  Frank Martin - how about 'Tony Orlando'?

"Knock three times
On the Abrams
if you want meeee..."
Posted by: Raj || 04/01/2004 14:13 Comments || Top||

#22  Frank Martin - Lol! Compiling that list was prolly fun! Some excellent imagination shown! Kudos!

I have my hopes up that the cordon, section, sweep idea will be adopted. The time lapse hurts, but in the Arab mind Dire Revenge can be for events centuries ago - so we should not let our Western attitudes get in the way, here. THEY will get it when it comes. So let it come, Sanchez, or get the fuck out of the way and allow someone with stones to do the job. This is the crunch time, when those who understand the hard mathematics should step forward and carry out the mission. Anything less and we have accepted failure against these barbarians.
Posted by: .com || 04/01/2004 15:03 Comments || Top||

#23  AP 'An Iraqi Governing Council member stressed that those responsible represented just a small minority of Iraqis but also encouraged U.S. troops to think carefully about how to respond.

"In 1958, July 14th, some members of the royal family were killed and mutilated. Iraqis were ashamed for decades at this barbaric event," Samir Sumaidi said. "Now after this I feel that again Iraqis will hang their heads in shame." '


Right on schedule. Within the next news cycle, as I said. No word from Sadr or Sistani, that Im aware of.
Posted by: Liberalhawk || 04/01/2004 16:04 Comments || Top||

#24  I'm telling ya' - all they'll do is a midnight raid on a few mud huts and nab a few troublemakers. Its the SOP now - and it will be as affective as a popcorn fart.
Posted by: Yosemite Sam || 04/01/2004 16:10 Comments || Top||

#25  I have my hopes up that the cordon, section, sweep idea will be adopted

this exactly what happened in this city last autumn. these guys do not get the message. moral of this story is to not let up on this city. keep the whole damn city on lockdown until each and every person involved is id by the populace. no one leaves no one enters, going soft on this city is a no winner. even if it is only a few fanatics (which i believe it is - this was a calculated act) make everyones life miserable until they cough them up.
Posted by: Dan || 04/01/2004 16:13 Comments || Top||

#26  Dan - I beg to differ. They have attempted targeted cleanups based upon intel with specific info.

The quote you used was referring to a thread yesterday. It was talking about a total takedown of the city - Savagery in Fallujah was Fred's featured link to the thread. Old Spook posted a wise, clear, clean, hard-ass plan for how to accomplish it. I believe it would work and would make each and every Fallujan experience (at least) a week out in the countryside - that would make the point to the innocents, as well, that at least some responsibility for what is done (and implicitly condoned) in their city must be borne by all - so they would be inclined to help prevent such acts in the future. This would make us both happy, from what you posted. Where the asshats are located, it would make going medievel on their asses very straight-forward.

I do not want any soft-stroke PC BS, either. I want the whole fucking city to suffer for what they have fostered, nurtured, ignored, supported, whatEVER. An object lesson is called for here. We'll see if the CA Mil Cmd has what it takes to win this thing or not.

The buzz by the ex-mil talking heads on FoxNews sez we will get a "response" within 48 hrs. Here's hoping it's substantive and all-encompassing -- and effective.
Posted by: .com || 04/01/2004 16:29 Comments || Top||

#27  We better get a response within 48Hours com, or the Marines just might riot AKA start shooting any Muslim with a gun.
Posted by: Charles || 04/01/2004 16:34 Comments || Top||

#28  At the very least, I would hope that there are several teams of marine snipers lurking...and if something like this every happens again the cameras will capture heads exploding like ripe melons from .50 Cal rounds from a mile away.
Posted by: mjh || 04/01/2004 16:46 Comments || Top||

#29  This is enough to piss anyone off right here.
Posted by: Lil Dhimmi || 04/01/2004 17:36 Comments || Top||

#30  Lil D - Oh man - the DUmmies have no envelope. Words fail me. Thx for posting this, bro.
Posted by: .com || 04/01/2004 17:42 Comments || Top||

#31  mhw - Jimmy Dean is alive and well, living outside Richmond, Virginia, and sueing the Sara Lee Corp. over continuing to use his name on his sausage (which they bought) after dropping him as a spokesman.

We take our entertainment where we can get it down here. :-p
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut || 04/01/2004 18:39 Comments || Top||

#32  LD- man, you weren't kidding. That's disgusting.

Reading stuff like that makes my skin crawl; my kid is over there risking his life while these pustules trash everything that is good and decent about our country.

If Kerry wins this Fall, I'm not sure it would bother me a whole lot to wake up some day early next year and find out there's been a military takeover with the aim of rooting out the socialist rot and restoring proper Constitutional rule.

Normally I'd be horrified at the idea of a coup; but to depose a President Kerry and stop the decline, I just don't know.

I just don't know...
Posted by: Dave D. || 04/01/2004 19:24 Comments || Top||

#33  Dave, absolutely right. When we have dealt with the foreign enemies we must turn our attention to the enemy within.
This is going to be very difficult, since (imho) very few Americans have any idea who the enemy really are and what drives them.

The clearest and most reasonable exposition of this that I have come across is Thomas M. Franks' The Conquest of Cool. This documents the historical and cultural relationships among mass media, the advertising culture, and radical politics.

I confess to being a bit of a bore about evangelizing for this book, but it really is one of the most important works of cultural history in recent years. The scales will fall from many eyes upon reading it.
It helps Franks' credibility that he is definitely not a right-winger, and does not appear to have any kind of partisan agenda at all.
Posted by: Atomic Conspiracy || 04/01/2004 19:48 Comments || Top||

#34  Frank Martin's plan is pretty much genius! LOL, too.

Clearly, the Marines are "sweating out" Falluja tonight.
It must suck to be those barbarians!
Bet you could hear a pin drop in town.
Did y'all know that 25,000 Marines were there?
I read yesterday that both Hamas and Hizbollah had set up shop in Iraq...Did the Fallujans know that Marines have been looking for payback since their barracks were blown up in Beirut in 1983???
We are talking some seriously motivated Lean, Green, Killing Machines!!
Semper Fi and LET'S ROLL!
Posted by: Anonymous3985 || 04/01/2004 20:07 Comments || Top||

#35  Frank Martin's plan is pretty much genius! LOL, too.

Clearly, the Marines are "sweating out" Falluja tonight.
It must suck to be those barbarians!
Bet you could hear a pin drop in town.
Did y'all know that 25,000 Marines were there?
I read yesterday that both Hamas and Hizbollah had set up shop in Iraq...Did the Fallujans know that Marines have been looking for payback since their barracks were blown up in Beirut in 1983???
We are talking some seriously motivated Lean, Green, Killing Machines!!
Semper Fi and LET'S ROLL!
Posted by: Jen || 04/01/2004 20:08 Comments || Top||

#36  I'll say what I said yesterday...this was a failure of command, or the Rules of Engagement foistered on the Marines. You can beat your breast all you want about how the Maines will kick ass...but the ass kicking needed to be Yesterday, during the incident.

That's the truth of it.

If there were 25K Marines around Falluja yesterday...no one has yet even raised the question of why this was allowed to go on for as long as it did?

The Marine Commander needs to answer for this...if it was in his RoE to not engage in these circumstances, then fine. If he didn't know that a mob and murder was going on in Zone of Responsibility, at the major intersection of the City, he needs to answer for that also.

There may or may not be answers for these Questions...but these are the revelent Questions! No one seems to want to touch this aspect of the Murders yesterday.
Posted by: Traveller || 04/01/2004 20:33 Comments || Top||

#37  Dave,

Although I intend to vote for Bush at least five times (I live in Louisiana), you may be overestimating the effects of Kerry winning. The guy has only one conviction: that he is entitled to be the President. Beyond that, he can't decide what color tie to wear, and is simply saying whatever will get him elected. I think the left is going to be sorely disappointed with the man.

But I don't think it will come to that. Kerry is imploding at a rate I would not have hoped for in my wildest dreams.
Posted by: Matt || 04/01/2004 20:34 Comments || Top||

#38  Jack Deth (#9), has hit the head on the nail. The U.S. will eventually take note of how the Romans handled situations like this centuries ago, especially at Masada! The Iraqi's are 'driving' us to this inevitable conclusion. We haven't reahed the DEATH PERCENTAGE yet, say...20% of Occupation.
Posted by: smn || 04/01/2004 22:06 Comments || Top||

#39  The light touch bit is a bunch of crap. The bad guys hiding in Faluja know the Marines reputation and hoped they could be provoked into slaughtering innocence and thus drumming up a lot of support to their cause. They might be suprised at how methodical and efficient the modern Marines can be.

I wouldn't be surprised fo find a few food caravans are delayed since the security was attacked on that last one. Let them get a bit hungry and think about what they did.
Posted by: ruprecht || 04/02/2004 0:11 Comments || Top||


CPA Briefing 3-31-2004
  • One hundred and fifty-six Iraqi police officers will graduate tomorrow in Amman, Jordan from a six-week course that prepared them for staff- and commander-level responsibilities in the Iraqi armed forces. Sorry, 156 Iraqi army officers will graduate tomorrow in Amman, Jordan. These officers were trained in leadership, law, planning, coordination, communications, tactics, operations and logistics. They will soon return to Iraq and assume command in staff- level positions within their army’s newly organized battalions and brigades.
  • In the northern zone of operations, there were three attacks on Iraqi security forces in Mosul yesterday. In the first incident the Iraqi police service reported a drive-by shooting on an Iraqi police service patrol in Mosul at 17:00 with no injuries. Fifteen minutes later a drive-by shooting wounded a facility protection service employee at the Mosul television station. And at 17:30 the Iraqi police service reported a drive-by shooting on a traffic control point at Mosul, again with no injuries.
  • This morning two bodyguards for the governor of Diyala Province and three bystanders were wounded in Baqubah when a suicide car bomber pulled up in a white Fiat beside the governor’s car and killed himself by detonating the car bomb. The bomb was estimated to consist of three to six artillery shells and approximately 25 kilograms of TNT. One truck, two vehicles and one building were damaged in the explosion. The wounded were taken to Baqubah Hospital, where their condition remains unknown, but the governor was unharmed. The Iraqi police are investigating the incident.
  • In Baghdad, based on information provided by an Iraqi citizen, coalition forces raided a Baghdad safe house last night to capture Basim Ali Rahim and Khalid Mahmoud. Mahmoud (sp) is a former soldier in the Iraqi army and a former member of the Iraqi Interior Ministry, and he and Rahim are said to be directly responsible for the attack on the Berj Al Hyatt Hotel on 18 March. These personnel are also wanted for their involvement in a cell consisting of former regime elements operating in Baghdad.
  • Yesterday coalition forces conducted a raid to capture a group of suspected bomb makers calling themselves the Medical City Group. The unit searched several houses in the area, capturing 11 personnel, seizing weapons, various containers of chemicals, books on bomb making, and poisons and assorted small-arms ammunition. Two of the prisoners tested positive for explosives with a vapor tracer device.
  • Fallujah remains one of those cities in Iraq that just don’t get it. It’s a former Ba’athist stronghold. This was a city that profited immeasurably and immensely under the former regime. They have a view that somehow the harder they fight, the better chance they have of achieving some sort of restorationist movement within the country. They fight. We work with them.
    It is a small minority of the people in Fallujah. Most of the people in Fallujah want to move on with their lives, want to move forward, want to be part of a new Iraq. There’s a small core element that doesn’t seem to get it. They’re desperate to try to hold out, desperate to try to turn back the hands of time, and that just isn’t going to happen.
    Just like the 82nd Airborne Division and the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment behind it -- before it, the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force is dedicated to going into Fallujah at any time to restore order, to establish a safe and secure environment, and to get on with the progress that’s being denied to the vast majority of citizens in Fallujah.
  • Rachel, to your second question, the people who pulled those bodies out and engaged in this attack against the contractors are not people we are here to help. They are people who have a much different vision for the future of Iraq than the overwhelming majority of Iraqis. They are people who want Iraq to turn back to an era of mass graves, of rape rooms and torture chambers and chemical attacks. They want to turn back to the era of Saddam Hussein. Those aren’t people we’re here to help, and it is not surprising that they are engaging in attacks as we increasingly make progress and we increasingly move along to handing over sovereignty and handing over a democratic Iraq at peace with itself, at peace with its own citizens, which is exactly what they’re fighting against. And that is just around the corner. That is happening on June 30th.
  • Just adding on one point General Kimmitt made. We have completed approximately 18,000 projects, reconstruction, individual reconstruction projects, in this country over the past nine or 10 months. Some of them fall into the categories that General Kimmitt referenced: opening schools, installing generators in health clinics, building community centers, helping local police forces get stood up. It averages out to about 75 to 100 projects per day. So when the sun goes down today, 75 to 100 projects will be completed that weren’t completed when the sun went up this morning, and that’s despite the fact that there were attacks in this country today.
    The fact is, this process moves forward, progress is being made at very impressive rates, and it will continue to move forward. And there will be more attacks, sadly and tragically, but as General Kimmitt spoke to, these individual reconstruction projects, the sum of which will contribute to our overall goal, will continue.
Posted by: || 04/01/2004 10:06:11 AM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  "They fight. We work with them."

Whew. Now, THAT is a dry sense of humor.
Posted by: Dave D. || 04/01/2004 10:21 Comments || Top||

#2  Medical City Group

Sounds like the local GasPassers anticompetition Partnership.

Posted by: Shipman || 04/01/2004 12:12 Comments || Top||


Afghanistan/South Asia
Hit on PM Jamali thwarted
Adds some new info on the usual Pakistani schizophrenia ...
Pakistani police arrested a suspected militant with explosives on Thursday and some officials said he had been plotting an attack on the prime minister but others denied the premier was a target.
"No, no! Certainly not! It was... ummm... somebody else."
The man, a member of the outlawed Sunni Muslim militant group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, was found with about six kg of explosives, a hand grenade, several detonators and bomb making material, said Police Inspector Amjad Kayani. "The big target was the prime minister," he said, adding that the suspect had planned to plant explosives on a bridge. A senior provincial government official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, also said Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali was the suspect's target. But provincial police chief Syed Kamal Shah denied the prime minister had been singled out for attack. "This arrest is not connected to any security threat to a VIP," Shah said.
"Nothing to see here. Move along. These aren't the droids you're looking for..."
Police arrested the suspect, Naeem Baloch, early on Thursday, said Muneer Sheikh, a police bomb disposal official.
Posted by: Dan Darling || 04/01/2004 10:00:20 AM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  "found with about six kg of explosives, a hand grenade, several detonators and bomb making material"

I though all Islamists were issued these at birth....
Posted by: Frank G || 04/01/2004 10:13 Comments || Top||

#2  [Troll droppings deleted]
Posted by: Joe TROLL || 04/01/2004 22:11 Comments || Top||

#3  Shove it up your ass, Boris. You're not welcome on my site.
Posted by: Fred || 04/01/2004 22:13 Comments || Top||

#4  Fred Pruitt censors truth while Americans die in Iraq on basis of lies.
Posted by: Joe TROLL || 04/01/2004 22:11 Comments || Top||


Central Asia
Uzbekistan probing al-Qaeda link to recent violence
Uzbekistan is probing whether al Qaeda may be involved in violence which has killed at least 43 people this week and destabilized Washington's key Central Asian ally, a senior official said on Thursday. "The investigation does not rule out either the involvement of terrorists... in the Islamic Hizb ut-Tahrir organization or a tie with international terrorist organizations such as al Qaeda," Prosecutor General Rashid Kadyrov told Russia's Itar-Tass news agency.

In the latest incident, a man blew himself up in a residential area of the Uzbek capital late on Wednesday in what was originally reported to have been a hostage-taking. Police later said the man had been alone. The lack of reliable information -- state TV has reported on the clashes with a 24-hour delay -- has made it hard to establish a reliable account of violence more bloody than a failed assassination bid on President Islam Karimov in 1999. Another government official, who declined to go on the record, said it was still too early in the investigation to make a direct link to al Qaeda. "(Al Qaeda) is not a pleasant organization, but this does not mean we should blindly link it with the terrorist acts (in Tashkent)," the official said. One security official, speaking anonymously and not directly involved in the probe, said one line of inquiry was a resurgence of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), many of whose members are believed to have fought in Afghanistan in 2001. Tashkent residents have remained largely remained unmoved by the violence. Some have even expressed support for attacks seen as directed against the police force, where corruption is rife.
I'm still wondering if there's a connection between the Wana festivities and the booms and shootouts in Uzbekistan. Seems kinda coincidental not to have heard much from IMU for most of a year, then to have them pop up again twice in the space of a couple weeks. Maybe my nose is too sensitive... Maybe nothing to it...
Posted by: Dan Darling || 04/01/2004 9:56:09 AM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:


Iraq-Jordan
Iraqi exile sez bunkers held chemical weapons
For seven years, before he was tortured and sentenced to death, Rashid (not his real name) worked at the top of Iraq's scientific establishment. He says he regularly met Saddam Hussein and his cousin and strongman deputy prime minister Abdul Tawab Huweish. After the Gulf War he was put in charge of a taskforce code named "Al Babel" to develop stealth technology to make aircraft and missiles undetectable on radar.

Rashid, who now lives in Melbourne, also claims to have had access as a trusted insider to secret underground bunkers where chemical weapons were stored. "Saddam gave me access to everything, he was so desperate to perfect the stealth technology," he says.

Now Rashid's great fear is that Saddam loyalists still active in postwar Iraq may get to the chemicals and weapons he saw hidden away before fleeing for his life.

"If those weapons still exist, the worry is that they will be used against the Iraqi people, the US forces or even sold off to al-Qaeda. Maybe those weapons no longer exist, but I find it hard to believe they could disappear so easily," he says.

Rashid's days of working at the top came to an abrupt end in 1998 when he was arrested with a group of other scientists and army officers on charges of plotting to remove Saddam. He was taken to a high-security jail in the centre of Baghdad, run by the Mukhabarat (secret police), where he was tortured for three weeks, suffering severe spinal injuries.

Rashid was then transferred to the Abu Ghraib jail outside Baghdad for execution. "Each morning prisoners were executed. Some were shot and some were hung. I could see the executions from my cell window. You lived in a constant state of terror because you never knew who was next."

Rashid says he escaped when a high-ranking military officer and close friend bribed the guards to swap his file with that of an executed prisoner. "On visiting day I just walked out. Everything had been arranged; I had false travel documents that got me and my family across the border to Syria," he says.

Rashid's problems did not end there. The Iraqi secret police came looking for him at Damascus University where he taught physics part time, and he fled to Melbourne on an Emirates flight. He says he left his wife and family behind because the family had money to buy only a single ticket and at that stage he was the one whose life was in immediate danger.

Rashid has told The Age he knows of five secret storage bunkers around Baghdad, Basra and Tikrit, three of which he visited regularly as a top scientist and senior employee of Iraq's now defunct Atomic Energy Commission.

One, he says, was under an island in the Tigris River near Saddam University. Another was beneath the house of one of Saddam's cousins, and reached by a tunnel with a hidden entrance 800 metres away.

He described the bunkers as being built 15 metres underground, of reinforced concrete, and multi-storeyed. "Between these layers, pipes would rise up, through the building above to provide access for ventilation.

"The lethal chemicals were stored in drums and the bunkers were air-conditioned. But there were also artillery shells and 122-millimetre rockets armed with chemicals."

He says the sites had been built using foreign construction companies, including a company from China, and that nobody was allowed to approach without authorisation and extensive ID checks by the Special Republican Guard.

Rashid says meeting Saddam was always a bizarre experience. "Suddenly his people would appear unannounced. They would take you to a location and examine you carefully: mouth, hands, eyes and ears. Then you would be taken to another place and checked again. This could happen up to three times. Finally he would come into the room."

Rashid says Saddam was moody but was always on top of what was discussed, and read all scientific reports sent to him. "Nothing ever happened unless he approved it. That included the purchase of special equipment, sending people overseas to be trained. If you told him a project would take six months to complete, he would want it in four months."

After arriving in Australia, Rashid was issued with a temporary protection visa.

Even though Rashid's wife and four children have been processed and found to be refugees by the UNHCR in Syria, they remain stranded there. Australia's immigration laws prevent TPV holders access to family reunion and they have not been issued with a visa.

Although Rashid is known to authorities in Australia, he asked that his real name not be published, to protect him and his family from Saddam loyalists still active in Iraqi communities in and outside Australia.

"It's still too dangerous for us to speak out; I don't know who to trust. There are former army officers living in Australia who were close to Saddam," he says.
Posted by: Dan Darling || 04/01/2004 9:52:44 AM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:


Five U.S. Military Personnel Killed in Iraq
CAMP FALLUJAH, Iraq - Five U.S. military personnel serving with the First Marine Expeditionary Force were killed as a result of enemy action in the Al Anbar province today while conducting security and stability operations. I MEF force protection measures preclude the release of any information that could aid enemy personnel in assessing the effectiveness or lack thereof with regard to their tactics, techniques and procedures. The release of more details about the incident could place our personnel at greater risk. The names of the deceased are withheld pending next of kin notification.
Posted by: Chuck Simmins || 04/01/2004 9:55:02 AM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Fallugah sounds like a good place too do some MOAB testing
'
Posted by: smokeysinse || 04/01/2004 13:56 Comments || Top||


A Message for Fallujah
The best-written, most effectively pissed-off post I’ve read on this outrage. From Peggy Noonan.
The world is used to bad news and always has been, but now and then there occurs something so brutal, so outside the normal limits of what used to be called man’s inhumanity to man, that you have to look away. Then you force yourself to look and see and only one thought is possible: This must stop now. You wonder, how can we do it? And your mind says, immediately: Whatever it takes.

What they did in Fallujah, Iraq, on yesterday was such an event. The ambush, grenading, shooting and killing of four American civilians, the setting of their SUVs on fire and the brutalization of their corpses was savage, primitive, unacceptable. The terrible glee of the young men in the crowds, and the sadism they evinced, reminds us of the special power of the ignorant to impede the good. The pictures that television appropriately mostly did not show and the Internet inevitably mostly did were horrifying in a way that was reminiscent of the first still pictures of the Trade Center victims of 9/11. It was like seeing people in business suits falling through the air again. It was as if someone pointed a camera at evil and actually caught it in the act.

The Americans who were murdered were, according to the wires, working for a security company, a North Carolina-based subcontractor hired by the U.S. government, among other things, to guard convoys.

The convoys carried food. They carried it to Fallujah.

The four civilians were not the only American who died in Iraq yesterday. We lost five soldiers in a roadside bombing. The statements of American officials in Iraq were appropriate: This stops nothing, the terrorists will not win. A State Department spokesman said the contractors "were trying to make a difference and to help others." Indeed they were. There are many such in Iraq. They are risking their lives for many reasons, including improving the prospects for health and safety of 12-year-old boys like the one quoted by Reuters who witnessed the actions of his elders after the attack on the civilians. "I am happy to see this," he said.

It is hard not to hate the teenagers and young men who celebrated under the bridge where they hanged the charred bodies. They are human expressions of nihilism. They take pleasure in evil, and they were not shy to show it. They are arrogant. They think barbarity is their right.

If this time, in this incident, these young men are left unchecked, their ways and attitudes, their assumptions and method of operating will only be encouraged, and spread. So we had better check them.

It is possible that the atrocity in Fallujah was spontaneous or not fully thought through, but it doesn’t look like it. It seems likely to have been at least to some degree, and perhaps a high degree, well planned and calculated. The brutalizing of the bodies was done in a way that seemed imitative, as all have noted, of the incident in Mogadishu, Somalia, where in 1993 a frenzied mob dragged the dead body of a U.S. Army Ranger through the streets. The civilized world was horrified, and everyone knows what followed: a quick American retreat.

It is not a stretch to imagine the young murderers of Fallujah had this on their minds: Do it again to America, kill them and string up their corpses, because when you do this America leaves.

And so this time the response must be the opposite of the response in Mogadishu.

We know what the men and boys who did the atrocity of Fallujah look like; they posed for the cameras. We know exactly what they did--again, the cameras. We know they massed on a bridge and raised their guns triumphantly. It’s all there on film. It would be good not only for elemental justice but for Iraq and its future if a large force of coalition troops led by U.S. Marines would go into Fallujah, find the young men, arrest them or kill them, and, to make sure the point isn’t lost on them, blow up the bridge.
Amen to that idea!

Whatever the long-term impact of the charred bodies the short term response must be a message to Fallujah and to all the young men of Iraq: the violent and unlawful will be broken. Savagery is yesterday; it left with Saddam.

It is not only coalition forces that should send this message. It is important that Iraqis themselves--pro-peace and pro-democracy Iraqis who are attempting to build a new government--come forward to denounce what happened in Fallujah. They should stand before the world and denounce the atrocity in the most serious terms. So should our allies. And so should the United Nations.

If an unforgettable message is not sent to the young men of Fallujah, the young nihilists will be inspired, and the lesson of their nihilism--brutality trumps goodwill--will gain ground. The progressives of Iraq will be further disheartened, and all of those there from the West to help, from contract workers to military troops, will feel more beset, more resentful and less hopeful of a good outcome.

The terrible pictures of the charred bodies on the bridge cannot be erased, and no one who saw them is going to forget them. But they can in time come to be accompanied by other pictures--of determined U.S. Marines, for instance, rounding up the men who massed on the bridge under the bodies, and brandished their weapons, and laughed.
Posted by: snellenr || 04/01/2004 9:53:26 AM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Who would have thought that sweet little old Peggy could be so merciless?!
She gives we Bellicose Women™ a good name!
Posted by: Jen || 04/01/2004 10:13 Comments || Top||

#2  It is important that Iraqis themselves--pro-peace and pro-democracy Iraqis who are attempting to build a new government--come forward to denounce what happened in Fallujah.

Query: Has any of the Iraqi 'leaders' and 'Clerics' done so?
Posted by: CrazyFool || 04/01/2004 10:17 Comments || Top||

#3  CF -- part of the problem is that our press would regard any who do condemn the Beasts of Fallujah as being "sellouts" and would refuse to carry their comments.
Posted by: Robert Crawford || 04/01/2004 10:28 Comments || Top||

#4  I said yesterday that the bridge must come down - NOW. Fallujah needs a big lesson from the Cluebat™. Now that the moment has passed I hate those cheering little f*&kers even more than I did yesterday
Posted by: Frank G || 04/01/2004 10:36 Comments || Top||

#5  RC is correct.
Posted by: Liberalhawk || 04/01/2004 10:50 Comments || Top||

#6  There are times when the rules of civilization are a terrible constraint. It would be more satisfying to line the streets with crucified malefactors in Roman fashion and let the ravens pick them clean. Nevertheless, I have no doubts they will find there is no worse enemy than a US Marine.
Posted by: RWV || 04/01/2004 11:25 Comments || Top||

#7  Peggy Noonan is a treasure. It is time to kick ass and take names. Semper Fi!
Posted by: Sgt.DT || 04/01/2004 12:08 Comments || Top||

#8  to line the streets with crucified malefactors

I prefer building a new Hanging Garden of Babylon.
Posted by: Shipman || 04/01/2004 12:17 Comments || Top||

#9  Shipman, Hang them from the bridge (isn't death by hanging dishonorable in Islam?) then take out the bridge..... and several surrounding city blocks....
Posted by: CrazyFool || 04/01/2004 13:05 Comments || Top||

#10  So they brought food to Fallujah? I'd say it's to dangerous to bring food to Fallujah. For anyone. For quite some time.

Just stop anyone who brings food to Fallujah. It's just too dangerous.
Posted by: True German Ally || 04/01/2004 13:38 Comments || Top||

#11  This may have been mentioned yesterday, but . . . if these bastards posed for the cameras, why the hell didn't the camera crew do something to stop them? Don't know about anyone else, but I'm not sure I'd want to go into the country as a reporter without arming myself with something, given the way things are. (Do the rules prohibit this?) Or were they just too scared? This is a truly terrible thing, but the way it's no doubt going to be cited - as an example of "how bad things are in Iraq" - is even more terrible.
Posted by: The Doctor || 04/01/2004 14:17 Comments || Top||

#12  The Iraqi Islamotwerps believe that any food that comes their way is completely deserved, and is a pittance compared to the life they have lost since Sadaam is gone, so they don't care about it. Their interpretation of yesterday's events: "Ha, ha. We torched the Americans! Zionist, American, Jew foreigners--bad. Us good." To them, showing restraint is tantamount to admitting weakness.

Another thought--they want Fallujah to be a "graveyard for Americans." Sounds good. Let's level it and turn the whole area into a giant cemetary guarded by USMC. It will make our job disposing of the remains of such miscreants so much easier.

"How many do you have there."

"Twenty dead Iraqi insurgents, sir."

"Okay. Fallujah, sector twenty-nine."

We wouldn't even have to plant grass or anything.

Posted by: ex-lib || 04/01/2004 14:34 Comments || Top||

#13  Couple of points:

1. It is by no means "too late" to exact retribution on the Beasts and their supporters. True, a strike on the bridge immediately would have been great, but remember these were civilians: they may not have been able to communicate what was happening to the military in real time. The key thing is not to pull a Mogadishu. It doesn't matter if we hit them tomorrow or next week. What matters is that we hit them very, very hard.

As to the questions about the camera crew from The Doctor, I think the answer is obvious: they were an enemy camera crew from an Arab TV station. They are IN LEAGUE with the enemy, they don't have to worry about getting hurt and they're certainly not going to oppose butchery like this. They ENJOYED filming it.



Posted by: RMcLeod || 04/01/2004 14:44 Comments || Top||

#14  TGA - The entities providing food for all of the cities in the Sunni Triangle would be right and proper and morally correct to withdraw to Cyprus - don't you think? The Fallujans and citizenry of the other Sunni Triangle cities must show up there to collect their food. I think this response follows the best model as demonstrated by our moral betters.
Posted by: .com || 04/01/2004 15:16 Comments || Top||

#15  RMcLeod raises a good point - We'll go on the offense when we see fit. Gen Conway is one savvy guy. Maybe we're just waiting for things to die down a bit, then in the middle of the night some weeks from now various males of Fallujah between ages 20-40 just disapear. Also, without rhyme or reason to the locals - sections of buildings get cordoned off and searched by battalion level ops. Known derelict and abandoned building are inexplicably razed by hellfire missiles. Food shortages and power outages become the norm. Local head honchos disapear. Marine combat engineers blow the bridge. The infidel Marines blair their heavy metal music from humvees and LAV's every night into the city from 2310 to 0911 in the morning. I would mentally skull fuck & physically exhaust these fuckers until they get the picture that they are no longer running the show.
Posted by: Jarhead || 04/01/2004 15:52 Comments || Top||

#16  This may have been mentioned yesterday, but . . . if these bastards posed for the cameras, why the hell didn't the camera crew do something to stop them?

I heard the camera crew was from al'Jazeera. They almost certainly knew about the ambush before it happened. Heck, they probably filmed the ambush being set up and supplied both the gasoline and rope for the following barbarity.
Posted by: Robert Crawford || 04/01/2004 15:55 Comments || Top||

#17  .com, obviously the citizen of Fallujah don't want food from us... should we really force them to accept it?

Cyprus is really nice in spring.
Posted by: True German Ally || 04/01/2004 16:32 Comments || Top||

#18  TGA - lol! I *snicker* agree wholeheartedly! Let them eat cake fallafel, lol! I love the quote:
"Life is hard. It's a lot harder if you're stupid."

I offer the following as appropriate to tack on to the end:
"But it's incredibly frustrating if you're not!"

Re: Cyprus - Do they have "cherry blossom" time there, as well? If not, they should contact the Japanese - good plant stock is prolly available -- and a proper attitude and appreciation of this event is paramount!
Posted by: .com || 04/01/2004 16:42 Comments || Top||

#19  cut their f***ing power, water, food til they throw the dead bodies of the cockroaches out who did it.
Posted by: anymouse || 04/01/2004 17:16 Comments || Top||

#20  Oh Cyprus has almond blossom, orange blossom... I'm sure there's a lot of blossom there.

They also have the very pretty and rare butterflies. I think the UN, the NGOs and relief organizations should really do more to protect those butterflies. There is that very very rare and elusive Fallujah Monarch. We should really do more to protect it.

I think in ten years or so some UN bureaucrat can investigate why papers got all messed up and all the aid to help Fallujah ended up in Cyprus, to protect the Fallujah Monarch.

I'm sure we can work out a nice apology for the slim peaceful citizens of Fallujah, too. In due time.

Until then, let them call Kimmy for those delicious tree bark recipes. Oh they don't have trees in Fallujah?

You should have thought about it before you hang people who bring you food on bridges, folks.
Posted by: True German Ally || 04/01/2004 18:02 Comments || Top||

#21  TGA - ROFLMAO!!! Brought tears to my eyes! Lol!
Posted by: .com || 04/01/2004 18:20 Comments || Top||

#22  'Anymouse "19"', Even I can't imagine what the US Coalition would do if we cut off they're water and lights to 'flush' the bad guys out!! What if 90 to 95 percent of the men and women and children protested and stormed the "skirmish Line" in revolt? We'd have to kill hundreds of thousands within minutes or back up like 'crabs in a pot'!! Who would make that call...Whew.
Posted by: smn || 04/01/2004 22:23 Comments || Top||

#23  Cyprus in the springtime...this year might not be so nice with all the rain, damn mosquitoes, but it is generally nice here. Good rock climbing too, provided you don't break your ankle, check the latest on my link if interested. On topic, a MOAB wouldn't make me shed a tear.
Posted by: hairofthedawg || 04/01/2004 23:36 Comments || Top||

#24  Lake Fallujah has a nice ring to it. If you didn't bother to notify the residents before you created it, my heart wouldn't break.
Posted by: tu3031 || 04/01/2004 23:53 Comments || Top||

#25  Instead of destroying the bridge, why not rename it the "Sunni Bridge of Shame"? Convert the bridge to a toll bridge and use the tolls to pay Fallujah blood money to the survivors of those killed and mutilated there. Humiliate the city over this outrage.
Posted by: GK || 04/02/2004 0:42 Comments || Top||


Africa: Subsaharan
Ex-Nigeria military chief "missing"
A Nigerian court has ordered an investigation into the mysterious disappearance of a former military chief from a prison in Lagos.
Don't you hate it when that happens?
Hamza al-Mustapha, head of security for the late dictator Sani Abacha, was allegedly abducted from Kiri-Kiri prison after an exchange of fire. A BBC correspondent in Abuja says the state security service had wanted to question him over military issues. The Nigerian prison service has denied that Mr al-Mustapha was abducted.
"Nope, he wasn't abducted, he's just been, er, misplaced."
Maybe he eloped.
The former top military official was to appear in court on Wednesday to seek an orders preventing him being transferred to the custody of the state agents. During Abacha's rule Mr al-Mustapha was considered Nigeria's second most powerful official. In 1998, he was charged in 1998 with ordering the murder of Kudirat Abiola, the wife of opposition politician Chief Moshood Abiola. The BBC's Mannir Dan-Ali in Abuja says the former military chief disappeared on Tuesday night from Kiri-Kiri maximum security prison after people suspected to be security agents abducted him after a gun battle at the prison.
Sniff...sniff..smells like a jail break to me. Sprung him before state investigators could question him.
Judge Olubunmi Oyewole has ordered prosecutors to locate Hamza Al-Mustapha.
"Hamza al-Mustapha knows too much. Youse guys know what to do!"
Posted by: Steve || 04/01/2004 9:21:56 AM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  What's his wife's name so I know it's her when I get my scam email?
Posted by: tu3031 || 04/01/2004 11:11 Comments || Top||

#2  ruh oh, belive he snathced me bong and working in ca t er kat katur kattarh HORSE.
Posted by: HalfEmpty || 04/01/2004 18:07 Comments || Top||


Afghanistan/South Asia
Wazir War - Phase Two?
More than 3,000 armed tribesmen from the Mahsud tribe assembled in South Waziristan on Wednesday to become part of a force that would launch operations against suspects who killed 20 soldiers and caused injuries to another 24 in an ambush on a military convoy on March 22. Mahsud tribal elders said they expected the Lashkar, or force, in Spinkai Raghzai village to swell to 6,000 or even more by Thursday. "We would raid hideouts of the suspects, expel al-Qaeda members and supporters from the Ladha and Sarwakai Tehsils (sub-districts) inhabited by the Mahsud tribe, and nab all the wanted men," explained one of the elders.
Call us when you're finished, OK?
There were also reports of fresh Pakistan Army troops heading for Sarwakai, the site of the deadly ambush that prompted Islamic militants to boast about their capabilities as a guerilla force. Eyewitnesses in Tank saw scores of military vehicles that drove towards Jandoola and onwards to South Waziristan. The police escorted the convoy through the crowded city roads in Tank. Helicopters flew overhead as the vehicles, filled with soldiers and supplies, journeyed through the rugged mountain terrain. The troops were expected to stay in the Sarwakai fort, not far from the place where militants disguised as khassadars (tribal police) ambushed the military convoy. The Mahsud tribal Lashkar has already burnt down the house where the attackers were able to hide before the ambush and nabbed four suspects in Kaniguram village. The reinforcement of Pakistan Army troops was taking place at a time when Frontier Corps militiamen in around 25 vehicles were pulled out of Wana, headquarters of South Waziristan. The militiamen were provided air cover by helicopters as they drove away. The movement of troops was a cause of concern for most tribal people amid worries that a new and bigger military offensive against the militants was on the anvil.
Hummm, we heard they had pulled out and thought they had given up. Maybe just took time out to reload?
The Mahsud tribal Lashkar is expected to first march on Kotki village today. Ladha tehsil’s assistant political agent, Naeem Khan Saddozai, told The News that the Lashkar had been given targets in the Mahsud-inhabited Ladha and Sarwakai sub-districts. Members of the Lashkar said those having ties with al-Qaeda would be first asked to leave the area. In case of refusal, they said the suspects would be nabbed and delivered to the government and their houses burnt. However, it was unclear as to who and how many suspects were to be targeted. One suspect on everybody’s list was Waliur Rahman, who belongs to the small Burki tribe and was active as a pro-Taliban fighter in Afghanistan. Two of his brothers and a family guest have already been arrested. Meanwhile, the political agent, South Waziristan, has convened a jirga of the Ahmadzai Wazir tribe in Wana on Friday to inform it of the government’s stand on the prevailing situation in the region.
"Youz guys are in deep shit, you made da boss look bad."
The political agent, Mohammad Azam Khan, is expected to seek the cooperation of the tribal elders in its ongoing campaign against militants, particularly the non-Pakistanis whose presence in the Azam Warsak area triggered the recent military offensive. The focus would again be the Zalikhels, who are the biggest sub-tribe among the Ahmadzai Wazirs and have been blamed for harbouring al-Qaeda and Taliban suspects. Five of the most wanted men in South Waziristan, namely Nek Mohammad, Hafi Sharif and his brother Nur Islam, Maulvi Abbas and Maulvi Abdul Aziz, are from the Zalikhel sub-tribe. The Zalikhels would be asked once more to surrender the five men or face the consequences. The Zalikhels, it may be added, have already been given 10 days to surrender the killers of the two tehsildars, Matiullah Burki and Mir Nawaz Marwat, whose mud-covered bodies were recovered from a well in the Azam Warsak area on Tuesday.
This was their big mistake. I think the Pak Army was ready to pull out till these hostages got wacked. Now it's a matter of honor.
Under the concept of collective responsibility, the whole tribe is held responsible in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) for any crime that takes place in its territory. Islamic militants had made Burki and Marwat, both junior level government officials, hostage during the recent military operation in Azam Warsak. Burki’s uncle, Dr Qareeb, who is an elder of the Burki tribe in South Waziristan, told mourners at his nephew’s funeral that the government must do everything within its means to nab his killers. He argued that murdering a prisoner was un-Islamic and a violation of the Pakhtun code of honour. The killers, he felt, were bringing a bad name to Islam.
Yup, Dire Revenge time.
Mourners were visiting Burki’s family home in Kaniguram to offer their condolences. Marwat’s family in Mullazai Kakakhel in Tank district was also receiving mourners coming from South Waziristan and other places.
Tipping point, maybe?
Posted by: Steve || 04/01/2004 9:01:37 AM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  murdering a prisoner was un-Islamic

But right in line with mafioso code.
Posted by: Lucky || 04/01/2004 10:51 Comments || Top||

#2  I presume that whats going on involves a considerable amount of manuevering of Pashtun tribes and subtribes against each other. Burkis and their allies (mahsuds?) against the Ahmadzai, or at least the Zalikhel.
Posted by: Liberalhawk || 04/01/2004 10:55 Comments || Top||

#3  LH, what are the odds that this has nothing to do with the WoT and everything to do with putting down those Waziri tribes who aren't playing ball with the central government of Pakistan?
Posted by: Secret Master || 04/01/2004 11:35 Comments || Top||

#4  The killers, he felt, were bringing a bad name to Islam.

A little late for that...
Posted by: Raj || 04/01/2004 12:12 Comments || Top||

#5  Secret Master:

Though I would never presume to speak for another Ranter…

IMHO one of the strongest pillers of a free society is the paradox where individual freedoms are ensured when a central government can exert it’s will in all regions within it’s borders, which results in the consistency born from the rule of law. The next ingredient necessary in this recipe, once central authority is established, is for the government to allow and promote personal expression within the law, without fear of losing the authority it has established.

Pakistan apprears, FINALLY, to be establishing control in their version of the USA 1800’s “wild west”. By establishing control, Pakistan will be less attractive to terrorist since they will not have free run of the region. This is why the establishment of central government control is not only a focator in the WoT, it is a crucial component.
Posted by: Hyper || 04/01/2004 13:16 Comments || Top||

#6  Not to be too snarky, but I gather you're saying that PakiWakiLand is only about 200 years behind us. I consider that to be excellent! If what Perv is trying to do works, it is very good news. Prior to the Waz Invasion, I would've put the figure somehwat higher! ;-)
Posted by: .com || 04/01/2004 13:45 Comments || Top||

#7  I agree with Hyper and DotComBoom. I wasnt so much addressing the ultimate importance of this - grand strategically, its essential that SOMEBODY take control of NWFP, and for a lot of reasons its far better that the Paks do it then that the 10th Mountain Division does it. I was simply interested in the degree to which the TACTICS necessarily get into the nitty grit of tribal politics.
Posted by: Liberalhawk || 04/01/2004 15:55 Comments || Top||

#8  The problem, to begin with, is that the NWFP dpn't belong to Pakistan: the Durand treaty had a vaildity of 100 years after what the NWFP should be brought back to Afghanistan. What Pakistan has done has been to buy the NWFP by giving them totalm self rule, exempting them from taxes and allowing their inhabitants unrestricted access to work in other parts of Pakistan. If Pakistan tries to have the common law appli to the NWFP could remember the old word for Pashtuns is Afghans

PS: One of the reasons Pakistan has ever tried to stir trouble in Afghanistan is that an empoverished Afghanistan will be unattractive to the NWFP people).
Posted by: JFM || 04/01/2004 16:13 Comments || Top||

#9  Do we see a Blood Fued brewing.
This could be worse than the Hatfields & McCoys

(and pretty entertaining at that)
Posted by: Raptor || 04/01/2004 16:31 Comments || Top||

#10  Hyper:
I'm personally a big fan of federalism. I like the idea of a weak central government and non-uniform national laws. IMAO fences make for good neighbors. If you don't like the way things work in California then you can move to Texas and vice versa.

But, being that this is the WoT, I can see your point. What's good for the 21st Century goose might not be so good for the 9th Century gander.
Posted by: Secret Master || 04/01/2004 16:47 Comments || Top||

#11  The first offensive was just pitching rocks at the hornets nest. They now think "its over". And they have burned many of their escape routes. Some of them were blown shut. But other routes they got out clean and THEY think they are not compromised. Hmm... Did the mice really get out of the trap or were they let out in order to get the Rats when they use the same places?

Seems a perfect time to launch a big military op. By US SF/Seals and raids by Rangers, and line the other side of the border with Marines and Mountain troops (i.e. our best dismounted fighters). Have the Paks distracting them elsewhere until we are ready to uncork things. Ambushes set, all kinds of stuff ready to pop.

Nah, we would not be that devious would we?
Posted by: OldSpook || 04/01/2004 19:05 Comments || Top||

#12  [Troll droppings deleted]
Posted by: John TROLL || 04/01/2004 22:15 Comments || Top||

#13  [Troll droppings deleted]
Posted by: Fred TROLL || 04/01/2004 22:24 Comments || Top||



#16  Fred Pruitt censors truth while Americans die in Iraq on basis of lies.
Posted by: John TROLL || 04/01/2004 22:15 Comments || Top||

#17  Fred Pruitt censors truth while Americans die in Iraq on basis of lies.
Posted by: Fred TROLL || 04/01/2004 22:24 Comments || Top||


Police foil attack plan on Pak PM
KARACHI: Police said today they foiled a plan to assassinate Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali in Karachi, arresting a member of an outlawed militant group with explosives. "The big target was the prime minister," Police Inspector Amjad Kayani told Reuters. The man, found with about six kg (12 lb) of explosives, a hand grenade, several detonators and bomb making material, had planned to plant a bomb under a bridge, he said.
If at first you don't succeed, quit.
Police arrested Naeem Baloch of outlawed militant group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi today, said Muneer Sheikh, a police bomb disposal official.
Posted by: Steve || 04/01/2004 8:51:59 AM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  [Troll droppings deleted]
Posted by: GJ TROLL || 04/01/2004 22:37 Comments || Top||



#4  Fred Pruitt censors truth while Americans die in Iraq on basis of lies.
Posted by: GJ TROLL || 04/01/2004 22:37 Comments || Top||


Israel-Palestine
Gun battle at Bethlehem mental hospital
Israeli soldiers have battled Palestinian gunmen holed up in a mental hospital in a flareup of violence as U.S. envoys began a visit to sound out Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on a Gaza pullout plan. White House officials Stephen Hadley and Elliot Abrams, along with Assistant Secretary of State William Burns, were also expected to meet Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurie.

Palestinian witnesses said 12 men, mostly known militants from al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades that make up part of President Yasser Arafat’s Fatah faction, were detained during the raid in Bethlehem. The army said there were no casualties. It said the militants had been meeting at the hospital to plan attacks against Israelis. "We circled the building at 4 a.m. and called on the terrorists to give themselves up. They opened fire from inside. We traded gunfire for about an hour," an army officer said on Thursday. Israeli fire left gaping holes in walls and chunks of plaster littering the corridors where nurses comforted shaken patients, the witnesses said. The wanted Palestinians surrendered after the firing stopped.
I am the only person who thinks Israeli’s intelligence always good, has got even better recently. I wonder what they are doing that is new?

I don't know about that, but a nut house seems an appropriate place for a Paleostinian planning session.
Posted by: Phil_B || 04/01/2004 5:55:44 AM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  It said the militants had been meeting at the hospital to plan attacks against Israelis.

How appropriate.
Posted by: Atomic Conspiracy || 04/01/2004 5:59 Comments || Top||

#2  Update:
Some of the arrested terrorists were PA police.
Posted by: Atomic Conspiracy || 04/01/2004 6:16 Comments || Top||

#3  [Troll droppings deleted]
Posted by: Murray TROLL || 04/01/2004 7:41 Comments || Top||

#4  and you, Boris, are the literal authority on truth---just like your role-model, Dr. Goebbels. Please follow his sterling example all the way to the end, but leave the kids out of it this time, please.
Posted by: Atomic Conspiracy || 04/01/2004 8:28 Comments || Top||

#5  Boris - Croatsucker
Posted by: Frank G || 04/01/2004 8:39 Comments || Top||

#6  Doesn't anyone else crack up when they read

"Palestinian gunmen holed up in a mental hospital"?

Well, I do :)

Notice they don't mention the damage the Paleos did with *their* shooting.
Posted by: Tony (UK) || 04/01/2004 15:14 Comments || Top||

#7  Ehoood Barak used to dress up as a woman when he was in the Israeli special forces to get the enemy. Of course, when he became the prime minister, he became an actual woman.
Posted by: Texas || 04/01/2004 16:43 Comments || Top||

#8  Fred Pruitt censors truth while Americans die in Iraq on basis of lies.
Posted by: Steve TROLL || 04/01/2004 7:41 Comments || Top||


Iraq-Jordan
Lashkar-e-Taiba activists arrested near Baghdad
Arrests made earlier this month near Baghdad have blown the lid off the links between the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Islamist groups fighting the United States military. Hard evidence has emerged for the first time that terrorist groups operating in Jammu and Kashmir — groups still indulged by the Pakistani military establishment — have spread their theatre of operations to Iraq. Earlier this month, U.S. forces in Iraq arrested a Pakistani national, Dilshad Ahmad, a long-time Lashkar operative hailing from the Bhawalpur area of the province of Punjab. Ahmad had played a key role in the Lashkar’s trans-Line of Control operations, serving between 1997 and 2001 as the organisation’s commander of the forward camps from where infiltrating groups of terrorists are launched into Jammu and Kashmir. Sources here told The Hindu that Ahmad had made at least six secret visits to Lashkar groups operating in Jammu and Kashmir during this period.

A close associate of Zaki-ur-Rahman Lakhvi, second-in-command in the Lashkar hierarchy, Ahmad had a key role in shaping the organisation’s ideological and military agenda. In 1998, he addressed a major Lashkar conference in Muridke, arguing for the need to extend the organisation’s activities outside Jammu and Kashmir. Ahmad is believed to have played a key role in building the infrastructure for the dozens of Lashkar cells, which have since carried out bombings in several major Indian cities. U.S. officials have until now managed to keep a tight lid on the news of Ahmad’s arrest, and diplomats at the American Embassy in New Delhi said they had no comments to offer. At least four other Lashkar operatives, however, are known to have been arrested in the intelligence-led operation that ended in Ahmad’s arrest. It is not known, however, just what the group was doing in Iraq, or if the arrests had anything to do with Monday’s apprehension of British nationals of Pakistani origin in London on charges of planning to execute a terrorist act.
Posted by: Paul Moloney || 04/01/2004 2:50:37 AM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:


4 Killed in Iraq Worked for N.C. Firm
MOYOCK, N.C. (AP) - The four civilians who were killed and dragged through the streets of an Iraqi town Wednesday worked for a North Carolina subcontractor that is providing security in a hostile area of Iraq. Blackwater Security Consulting provides security training and guard services to customers around the world. It is one of five subsidiaries of Blackwater USA, based in northeastern North Carolina about a half-hour's drive from the world's largest naval base in Norfolk, Va.

The company referred calls to a spokesman in suburban Washington who declined comment beyond a prepared statement that said Blackwater was a government subcontractor providing security for the delivery of food in the Fallujah area.

Privately owned Blackwater USA's range of services include providing firearms and small-groups training for Navy SEALs, police department SWAT teams and former special operations personnel. Blackwater President Gary Jackson and two other company leaders are former Navy SEAL commandos. "We're very proud of the work that we do. We feel that we support a just cause," assistant training director Chris Epperson said during a visit last month.

On a typical day, a Navy SEALs team practiced shooting in odd positions through doors and windows and cadets from the U.S. Coast Guard Academy learned how to storm through doorways during a room-by-room search. Plainclothes operatives practiced how to escape from a disabled sport-utility vehicle while under fire from attackers.

The company's security-consulting business connects former special forces troops with jobs that may involve protecting people or places, or training foreign militaries. Epperson said the company's contractors provide protection to Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator in Iraq. Other Blackwater USA subsidiaries train dogs and handlers for security work, and train pilots to land airplanes and helicopters on dirt landing strips.

Faye and Howard Forbes of Moyock said the deaths brought the war home to the community best known for being on the route to North Carolina's Outer Banks beaches.
I have family on the OBX and I've been through Moyock many a time.
Posted by: Steve White || 04/01/2004 2:02:18 AM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Killed while delivering food. Hmmm...
Posted by: Ben || 04/01/2004 3:44 Comments || Top||

#2  [Troll droppings deleted]
Posted by: Murray TROLL || 04/01/2004 7:47 Comments || Top||

#3  May they rest in peace. Time to bring the wood to Falujah. Fred, troll whacking needed on #2 here.
Posted by: Jarhead || 04/01/2004 7:48 Comments || Top||

#4  My (somewhat inflammatory) question about this whole episode is "Where were the Marines?".

Admittedly these guys were probably beyond help within seconds, but to allow their bodies to be handled in this way was a disgrace. It's bad enough that we adopted this "hands off" policy towards that town (encouraging the thugs), but I thought that was just an Army thing -- and that the shift in responsibility to the Marines would mean some changes for the better -- and I had hoped the sweep through the city (and ensuing firefight) in F-town last week, even though we had some KIA, was a step in the right direction.

Apparently not...
Posted by: snellenr || 04/01/2004 9:48 Comments || Top||

#5  give it time snellenr. We were not there, hard to second guess the commander on the scene. Matter of time, that place will get pacified or be incapacitated.
Posted by: Jarhead || 04/01/2004 12:13 Comments || Top||

#6  I think Bremer should issue a press release announcing that, since the four American civilians killed were protecting food shipmaents to Fallujah, there will be no further CPA food shipments to Fallujah as there are no more security guards.
Posted by: Tibor || 04/01/2004 12:21 Comments || Top||

#7  Hope so, JH -- but Fallujah's been a pebble in our shoe for nearly a year, and it just seems as though we're going to pussyfoot some more. 38 of the U.S. KIA since the "end" of the war have occurred in the Fallujah area (third place after Baghdad (101) and Mosul (44). [source: Iraq Coalition Casualty Count]
Posted by: snellenr || 04/01/2004 13:09 Comments || Top||

#8  Quote from Blackwater's home page:

A Memorial Fund has been established to support the victim's families of the March 31, 2004 Fallujah attack. All memorial gifts will be documented and appropriately acknowledged with due regard to the wishes of the donor and the nature of the contribution. Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of the victims

Please Mail the contributions to:
Memorial Fund
PO Box 159
Moyock, NC 27958

Please Make checks Payable to:
Memorial Fund

Please no cash contributions.
Posted by: Puddle Pirate || 04/01/2004 17:17 Comments || Top||

#9  Our prayers go out to the family and friends of these four fine people. The perpetrators shall be cursed until the last star ceases to shine in the night sky. May their souls be forever damned, and never find peace.
Posted by: Old Patriot || 04/01/2004 18:01 Comments || Top||

#10  Let's see. Continuing to daydream about appropriate responses, let's try this one:

First, erect a triple concertina fence around the city, with just one entrance and exit. At that opening, put up a big billboard, in Farsi, announcing that Blackwater Security has now been placed in charge of security and team-building training in Fallujah. Give Blackwater 10,000 Kurdish volunteers, to help with security.

Now, start the teambuilding training. For the able-bodied men of Fallujah, this consists of digging deep rectangular holes, about two meters long, by one meter wide, by 2 meters deep. Each man digs two such holes, arranged in neat rows in an open space near the town.

Meanwhile, the young boys and old men are assigned to build about 1,000 sets of wooden gallows, complete with rope nooses, spread throughout the city. The women are split into two groups - one group builds coffins, the other group carves headstones.

All under Blackwater supervision, assisted by Kurdish augmentation.

Idle hands are the devil's playground. Keep all the good people of Fallujah thoughtfully busy with productive work. Let Blackwater (and the Kurds) work on their grief management skills.

My bet is that Fallujah would soon become a much more peaceful place - one way or the other.

Daydreaming ..........
Posted by: Lone Ranger || 04/01/2004 20:25 Comments || Top||

#11  Lost in the hubbub is this - what were a few lightly-armed civilian guards doing alone in a single humvee? Why weren't they travelling in convoys? I suspect they had been doing these jaunts for a while before this attack taught their eventual successors that this is not something you should do in Fallujah. This is the hardest way to learn this kind of lesson, but I suspect we won't see this kind of attack again - a convoy system will be put in place after this - without exception.
Posted by: Zhang Fei || 04/01/2004 20:33 Comments || Top||

#12  Fred Pruitt censors truth while Americans die in Iraq on basis of lies.
Posted by: Jackson TROLL || 04/01/2004 7:47 Comments || Top||


Afghanistan/South Asia
Afghanistan: Return of the jihadis
With the onset of summer and the ice now melting in the mountains of Afghanistan, the most organized global struggle yet of the International Islamic Front partners has begun to defeat the United States and coalition forces at their hub in Afghanistan. The early manifestations of this can already be seen in Uzbekistan, where a series of terror attacks over the past few days have left more than 40 people dead, and in the foiled terror attacks in Britain and the Philippines. But the real battlefield is Afghanistan, where Pakistan, already the world’s backyard of radical Islam, will play an important role.

Events in Uzbekistan, including suicide attacks and culminating in a shootout on Tuesday, are the bloodiest wave of violence to hit the former Soviet republic since it enlisted as a key US ally in the "war on terrorism" soon after the 2001 September 11 attacks. A US air base there proved an important strategic asset in the US aerial attacks on Afghanistan. Some reports have blamed the Hizb ut-Tahrir, but this is unlikely to be the case, as this group, although committed to the overthrow of existing political regimes and their replacement with a caliphate, has traditionally been non-violent. Rather, the violence in Uzbekistan is much more likely to be linked to Afghanistan and the struggle that is to be played out there in the coming months.

In the development of Islamic radicalism in Uzbekistan, the "Naqshband" circle of Sufis emerged as an underground network during Soviet rule in opposition to the Soviet system. These Sufis believed in militancy against "tyrant" rulers. The network’s first contact with Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) came when the Sufis began resistance operations against the Soviets after the invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. In collaboration with the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the ISI actively assisted the militants, and also devised a strategy to take the struggle back to USSR soil, apart from Afghanistan. The go-between for this was the Hizb-i-Islami Afghanistan (HIA), led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who is now once again spearheading operations in Afghanistan. The HIA helped spread the revolutionary literature of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Central Asian republics. The aim was not to convert ordinary Muslims, but to recruit revolutionaries who would attack the Soviet system from within their own regions, including Uzbekistan. These operations were launched in the mid and late 1980s, and over the years a whole new generation has evolved committed to underground operations. They are not an isolated community, like the Pakistani tribals, who are easily identified with their links to militants. This new generation of militants is part and parcel of Central Asian urban culture, and like any secret agents, they are not easily identifiable.

Meanwhile, the Pakistan army established a special intelligence cell within the HIA for which Pakistanis and Afghans were trained. All of the Pakistanis were ISI operators. However, after 1989, at the end of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the HIA began to work independently and it absorbed many Arabs into the intelligence cell, as well as Central Asian youths. These were sent to training camps in Afghanistan, where they were drilled by Arab instructors. The Central Asian recruits, therefore, forged good ties with many Arabs.

In the early 1980s Afghanistan also served as a testing ground for Pakistani dictator Zia ul-Haq’s vision, along with his chief spy master, then Lieutenant-General Akhtar Abdul Rehman (later a full general), for an international Islamic brigade. This matured into Osama bin Laden’s International Islamic Front, a loose umbrella front for organizations that include al-Qaeda and independent cells in Central Asia comprising militants nurtured by the CIA-ISI nexus and trained in the HIA’s Afghanistan camps. In this context, the terror in Uzbekistan, which borders Afghanistan, cannot be seen in isolation, rather as the beginning of a new jihad in Afghanistan that will tap into resources, especially those in Central Asia, developed over many years.
Posted by: Paul Moloney || 04/01/2004 1:45:13 AM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Yep, Bring your your bad asses. Your not going against soviets anymore and you RPGs are crap. Your funding is going away and your cadres are led by morons with a koranic education. So fuck@@f and die. Like cord wood.
Posted by: Lucky || 04/01/2004 1:56 Comments || Top||

#2  [Troll droppings deleted]
Posted by: Murray TROLL || 04/01/2004 8:01 Comments || Top||

#3  1. Eurasianet says the Uzbek troubles are the result of local tensions, not international at all
2. Atimes say attackers are a Sufi org - yet cooperating with Osame, Hekmatyar, ISI and other pro-Wahabi elements - seems unlikely to me - any other evidence for this?

3. Article mentions 43 dead, as if this were a danger sign - IIUC most of these dead were terrorists (I assume Jihadis)

4. No real evidence that this is connected to an attack in Afghan, other than the old (and unproven) connection to Hekmatyar.


So what the basis for the headline? :

Assertion - there will be a new wave of attacks in afghanistan. Why? there has been a wave of bloody attacks in Uzbek, these were done by the Sufis, and the Sufis are connected to Hekmatyar and ISI.

But A. The attacks in Uzbek have failed thus far and the blood has been the attackers. B. The attribution to Sufis is unproven C. The Sufi connection to HIA is unproven D. Even IF the attacker WERE Sufis connected to HIA, this would hardly show that new attacks in Afghanistan are likely.

Another piece of entertaining Asia Times speculation.
Posted by: Liberalhawk || 04/01/2004 11:06 Comments || Top||

#4  Side note: Asia Times was the source that put Fallujah's population at 500K when I googled for it yesterday - more than double almost all other sources' estimates. A Paragon of truth, they are...
Posted by: .com || 04/01/2004 13:47 Comments || Top||

#5  2,000 Marines will welcome them with open arms.
Posted by: Raptor || 04/01/2004 16:39 Comments || Top||

#6  Fred Pruitt censors truth while Americans die in Iraq on basis of lies.
Posted by: Fred TROLL || 04/01/2004 8:01 Comments || Top||


Caucasus
Chechen bombing mastermind detained
A man suspected of being involved in the organization of the government building blast in Chechnya in December of 2002 has been detained, RIA Novosti reports, citing a source in the staff of the joint command of the Armed Forces. According to the source, the man, identified only by his last name of Adamov, was detained in the Leninsky region of Grozny, Chechnya’s capital, where the government buildings are located. Russian authorities announced after the attack that the bombing had been carried out on the orders of top Chechen separatist and field commander Shamil Basayev, and by the extremist organization “Muslim Brothers” led by the Saudi extremist Abu al-Walid. Chechen separatists, meanwhile, said earlier that the attack was carried out by fighters of the extremist “Dzhamaat” [Jamaat] group. Several servicemen from a police special task force who were manning the security posts around the building were charged in connection with the attack.
Posted by: Dan Darling || 04/01/2004 1:10:16 AM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  [Troll droppings deleted]
Posted by: Murray TROLL || 04/01/2004 8:05 Comments || Top||

#2  Fred Pruitt censors truth while Americans die in Iraq on basis of lies.
Posted by: Chechen TROLL || 04/01/2004 8:05 Comments || Top||


Central Asia
Uzbek festivities may show that the IMU's back
A woman's shoe, shreds of black cloth - once the chador uniform of a female suicide bomber - and several dried pools of blood remained Wednesday in Uzbekistan after four days of militant violence that has shaken Central Asia. "Wahhabis," spat out residents, using their term for the radical Islamists who lived for a time in their Soviet-style apartment block before a gun battle Tuesday with police. Wednesday night, militants reportedly took hostages in Tashkent after a new round of blasts. Suicide attacks and explosions have so far claimed 42 lives, and police Wednesday have arrested at least 30 people.

A key ally in the US war on terror, Uzbekistan has not seen such lethal incidents in half a decade. Experts say the bloodshed could signal the resurgence of the regional Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), which has revitalized itself in the lawless Pakistan-Afghan border area, under the leadership of Tohir Yuldashev. Or it could point to a violent offshoot of the local, moderate Hizb-ut-Tahrir, fed up with years of brutal crackdowns by Uzbek President Islam Karimov on Islamic believers of all types.
Hizb ut-Tahrir is "moderate" the way I'm "slender."
"If Karimov overreacts, then Yuldashev - or whoever else is responsible for this - will win, because they will attract a wider recruitment base," says Tamara Makarenko, a specialist on Central Asia militant groups at St. Andrews University in Scotland.
If he underreacts, the Wahhabis will take his country away from him and turn Uzbekistan into another desolate Islamic craphole.
"Given the extremely repressive measures taken by President Karimov since the alliance with the US, I think Islamic militancy has only increased," says Ahmed Rashid, author of "Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia," who was reached by phone in Lahore, Pakistan. "There will be more of this, because there is probably quite a reservoir of people willing to do it. Clearly the idea is to get public support by targeting the police, and provoke some public reaction."

The IMU was battered in the 2001 Afghan war, while fighting alongside Al Qaeda and the Taliban. And Uzbek officials have often declared victory over the group. Mr. Karimov, who has ruled the country since 1989, has already used the attacks to his advantage, casting Uzbekistan as firmly on the front line against terrorism, and in the US camp. Any American support for such a heavy hand "will have a ripple effect back into Afghanistan, back into [Pakistan's] tribal areas, and back into [Uzbekistan's militant] Fergana Valley, which has been relatively quiet," Ms. Makarenko says. US Secretary of State Colin Powell called his Uzbek counterpart Tuesday to offer assistance into a government investigation, though the State Department's spokesman noted Wednesday that "more democracy is the best antidote to terror." But the hopes of pro-democracy campaigners and of Uzbekistan's embattled opposition that the US presence might force cracks in Karimov's authoritarian rule have not been realized. Thousands of devout Muslims have been arrested and held in recent years, sometimes for nothing more than praying. Membership is outlawed in the Hizb-ut-Tahrir, which rejects violence but calls for a pan-Islamic state.
They reject violence for themselves to keep a legitimate front. They funnel the cannon fodder into the hard core groups.
Karimov explicitly blamed this group for the latest attacks, though his ministers broadened their charges, stating that the Uzbek events are "links in the same chain" of global terrorism. The Uzbek attacks may be the result of a "cross-pollination" of Islamic groups, says Rashid. "The big debate has been, especially in Hizb-ut-Tahrir, whether to use violence or not," he says. "This could be a splinter group that decided to go down the path of violence, or part of the IMU underground."

"The repression is enormous in Uzbekistan, and by it the government has driven many people into the arms of the extremists," says Marina Pikulina, an independent political researcher in Tashkent. "When the militants seemed to target only policemen, I think they gained some sympathy," says Ms. Pikulina. "But not after it was clear they also killed randomly. People are very afraid now to get caught up between the government crackdown and the militants." One tale making the rounds points to deep despair: A woman supposedly blew herself up Monday morning at the Chorsu market "with her 6-year-old son" says Pikulina. "People say - and this is our only source of information, since the government does not tell us what happened - that this women's husband was accused of being a member of Hizb-ut-Tahrir and put into prison," Pikulina adds. "This is why the woman went to Afghanistan into a training camp and now killed herself. This was the action of a desperate woman, who did not see a way out."

The attacks could be the work of IMU sleeper cells that are believed to have been in place since 2000, and whose members may have been able to correspond with Yuldashev's core IMU group in Pakistan's border areas, says Makarenko.
My gut tells me there's a link between Yuldashev's boyz getting beaten up in South Waziristan and this. It doesn't seem to make any sense — commander wounded, praetorian guard shot up, so why expend your reserves instead of regrouping? — but then, there's lots about the Bad Guys' tactics that doesn't make sense to me...
The spike in violence is "good timing for the IMU to say, 'You are still vulnerable,' " says Makarenko, even as the US is getting "somewhat overconfident" by conducting numerous raids along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and has officially enlisted Pakistani help that officials say nearly netted the IMU chief last week. "Yuldashev has been very busy the last couple years, building an infrastructure," says Makarenko. A more radical, ideological IMU is growing from "all the [Al Qaeda and Taliban] remnants scattered around the [Afghan-Pakistan] border, willing to latch onto anything."
So why piss it away on a few booms, a booby trap and a few hostages? Was Yuldashev wounded in the head?
With the US presence and the IMU's long-standing effort to topple Karimov, Uzbekistan was a logical target. "I think [IMU chiefs] said: 'We've built ourselves to an extent that we can afford to do this, and let's do it where they don't expect it,' " Makarenko adds. "Bombs going off in Afghanistan, who cares? But in Uzbekistan, you win global attention."
Maybe you win attention in Uzbekistan, but globally — no. Except to Uzbeks, Uzbekistan is the middle of nowhere...
Rebels also win revenge against a leader who has not been shy about confronting believers. Karimov has never withdrawn his 1998 statement to parliament that Islamic extremists "must be shot in the head," and that "if necessary, I'll shoot them myself." Allison Gill, a Central Asia researcher for New York-based Human Rights Watch - which released on Tuesday a 300-page report detailing abuses in Uzbekistan - says rights campaigners fear an intensification of the crackdown on the devout. "According to our knowledge, there has been hardly any serious investigation done after [these latest] attacks," says Ms. Gill. "This makes it very easy for prosecutors to manipulate evidence against the accused, which happens frequently in Uzbekistan."
Posted by: Dan Darling || 04/01/2004 1:02:49 AM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:


Uzbek gunnies take hostages, set off more bombs
Militants seized hostages and barricaded themselves in a house yesterday after a grenade blast in Uzbekistan's capital led to a clash with authorities. Russian television said three people were wounded in the latest terrorist-related violence in the Central Asian nation. A grenade booby trap detonated when a police patrol tried to enter the gate of the house in Tashkent, leading to a siege in which the militants took hostages. Police said about 20 captors were holding "many" hostages. Special police forces surrounded the area but said they were afraid to launch an attack because of the hostages. Authorities were negotiating with the hostage-takers. Television reported three people were wounded earlier in the blast in the Sabir-Rakhimovski district of Tashkent, near the Chorsu bazaar where suicide bombers struck on Monday. The grenade blast and hostage-taking came a day after fighting that left 23 people dead, including three police officers.
Posted by: Dan Darling || 04/01/2004 12:51:28 AM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:


Afghanistan/South Asia
Afghan army heads into Herat province
"Did you see Karzai's army?" a young Afghan security guard asked in a hushed voice. "They are all over the airport." Hundreds of men in green berets and combat fatigues, troops of the fledgling Afghan National Army, have encamped in this city close to Afghanistan's border with Iran. In addition to the troops in the airport, hundreds more have settled into the IV Army Corps base in the center of town and have rapidly become a familiar sight, driving around in new camouflage-painted Ford pickups.

But the soldiers, sent from Kabul by President Hamid Karzai, are far more than a friendly presence. Since they arrived with their American trainers, they have quietly, without fuss, changed the political and military dynamics in western Afghanistan. Since the national aviation minister was shot dead in the city on March 21, setting off hours of heavy fighting between men loyal to his father, Ismail Khan, the governor of Herat Province, and those of an ambitious young division commander whose guards had shot the minister, the people of Herat have been wondering what will happen next. Their first fears were that the 17th Division commander, Zaher Naibzadah, 34, who fled the city that night, would return and attack with a new force. Instead, to their surprise, hundreds of newly trained Afghan National Army troops showed up, averting for now the possibility of a brutal and destructive war. "They are in control of the place," a Western diplomat in Herat said. Once the full contingent of 1,500 men has arrived, the soldiers will patrol in the city and out to the Iranian border 75 miles to the west with the local police, the diplomat said.

It is a setback for Governor Khan, who was ruling Herat with an increasingly strong hand and with little regard for the central government. But, reeling from the death of his son and chief ally in the cabinet, Mirwais Sadeq, he has had to accept the troops. "He is not in a position to refuse," the diplomat said.

"It is time for the central government to extend its grip on the periphery," said Abu Diek, the United Nations representative in Herat. "We are embarking on a political process, and it would be good if the A.N.A. stayed." The most powerful warlord in the country, Mr. Khan was accustomed to wielding overwhelming military, political and economic control in his province, and strong influence in the poorer neighboring provinces of Ghor and Badghis. In the two years since the fall of the Taliban, he has shown a stubborn disdain for sharing power or heeding the strictures of the central government.

As the country prepares for national elections in September and tries to push through a program of disarmament and demobilization of thousands of militiamen, Mr. Khan's unchecked power was looming as a serious obstacle. Even as he prepared to bury his son, Mr. Khan, a former mujahedeen commander famed for his bravery in fighting the Soviet occupation, still tried to resist the deployment of the Afghan National Army. "Don't rub salt into our wounds," he reportedly told President Karzai, when informed of the plan by telephone, according to a local journalist. "Karzai said, `It's for your benefit,' and cut the phone," the journalist said.

The American commander of the local provincial reconstruction team, Lt. Col. James H. Hand, said the Afghan troops had received good cooperation so far from the governor and his officials. Buses met the troops, and facilities were provided, the colonel said. The 13,000 American troops in the country are still so busy in the south and east pursuing Taliban forces and hunting for Al Qaeda's leaders that the last thing they want is protracted strife in the west to add to their problems, another American officer said. Not satisfied with curbing Mr. Khan's military power, major figures in the central government are determined to remove him completely from western Afghanistan, offering him a position in Kabul or the governorship of another province. He has refused all offers so far, but close aides acknowledge that discussions are in progress.
Posted by: Dan Darling || 04/01/2004 12:23:43 AM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Excellent news.
Posted by: Liberalhawk || 04/01/2004 11:36 Comments || Top||

#2  Damn. Fascinating.
Posted by: Secret Master || 04/01/2004 11:44 Comments || Top||

#3  Mr. Khan's unchecked power was looming as a serious obstacle. Even as he prepared to bury his son, Mr. Khan, a former mujahedeen commander famed for his bravery in fighting the Soviet occupation, still tried to resist the deployment of the Afghan National Army. "Don't rub salt into our wounds," he reportedly told President Karzai, when informed of the plan by telephone, according to a local journalist. "Karzai said, `It's for your benefit,' and cut the phone," the journalist said.

Good for Karzai!
Posted by: Ptah || 04/01/2004 12:47 Comments || Top||



Who's in the News
66[untagged]

Bookmark
E-Mail Me

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

Merry-Go-Blog











On Sale now!


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

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

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

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

Two weeks of WOT
Thu 2004-04-01
  Hit on Jamali thwarted?
Wed 2004-03-31
  Savagery in Fallujah
Tue 2004-03-30
  Major al-Qaeda bombing foiled in the UK
Mon 2004-03-29
  Mullah Omar wounded in airstrike?
Sun 2004-03-28
  Rantissi: Bush Is 'Enemy of God'
Sat 2004-03-27
  Perv vows to eliminate al-Qaeda
Fri 2004-03-26
  Zarqawi dunnit!
Thu 2004-03-25
  Ayman sez to kill Perv
Wed 2004-03-24
  Assassination of German president foiled
Tue 2004-03-23
  Hamas under new management
Mon 2004-03-22
  Arabs warn of Dire Revenge™
Sun 2004-03-21
  Sheikh Yassin helizapped!
Sat 2004-03-20
  Annan proposes investigation of oil-for-food program
Fri 2004-03-19
  Aymen cornered in Waziristan. Or not.
Thu 2004-03-18
  "The conquest of Madrid"

Better than the average link...



Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
44.201.94.1
Help keep the Burg running! Paypal:
WoT Background (20)    (0)    (0)    (0)    (0)