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Rantburg
531690 articles and 1855967 comments are archived on Rantburg.

Today: 85 articles and 529 comments as of 11:53.
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Area: WoT Background                   
Fallujah deal imminent?
Today's Headlines
Headline Comments [Views]
Page 1: WoT Operations
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Gentle Reminders
Haven't heard from Fred or Ethel yet; no news is good news right now. Some gentle reminders --

1) keep the articles short. Some of them are getting really long lately, and Dan, Steve or I have to edit. Long articles make the load times longer for people with dial-up connections. Yeah, yeah, I'm as guilty as everyone else.

2) don't post commentary from other blogs, editorials, etc. Link 'em instead. Usual exceptions for Lileks, VDH and Steyn.

3) check your links when submitting an article. I've deleted a few articles in the holding pen in the last week because the links were broken and I couldn't figure out what the link was. Fred's pretty clear on this: no link = no post.

4) anon posters: if you're going to be a regular/semi-regular here, please pick a name. Names like "anonymous3104" and "anonymous4063" read like the Welsh regiment in Zulu.

5) if it isn't about the WoT, it goes to page 2. Nuttin' wrong with being on page 2, and it helps keep the load balanced and the comments going.

Thx!
Posted by: Steve White || 04/30/2004 12:50:17 AM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Conflicted, confused and ready to follow?

Oh My now what should I do?
Posted by: Lucky || 04/30/2004 1:10 Comments || Top||

#2  ...read like the Welsh regiment in Zulu.
"Mr. Witt, sir. Link your articles properly now. There's a good gentleman. You'll upset the lads."
Posted by: Colour Sgt. Bourne || 04/30/2004 2:51 Comments || Top||

#3  Tell Fred we wish him well!!
Posted by: B || 04/30/2004 3:54 Comments || Top||

#4  What's page 2? Where's the link to it? I don't see it anywhere.
Posted by: gromky || 04/30/2004 5:01 Comments || Top||

#5  It's at the top of the page, the link called 'Politix 'n' Stuff', next to 'WoT'. It's where all the Kerry bashing and 'funny' stories are supposed to go.
Posted by: Paul Moloney || 04/30/2004 5:14 Comments || Top||

#6  It would be nice if it were called, "Page 2" or something. Maybe it's just me, I've always been a bit touched in the head.
Posted by: gromky || 04/30/2004 5:48 Comments || Top||

#7  Last time Fred was gone, you guys were literally hell on wheels. This time you're giving us gentle reminders. What happened?
Posted by: Mike Sylwester || 04/30/2004 6:31 Comments || Top||

#8  ...read like the Welsh regiment in Zulu.

"Rantburg is a bloody miracle, Fred."

"If it's a miracle, Steve, it's a short chamber Boxer Henry point four five caliber miracle."
Posted by: Mike || 04/30/2004 6:37 Comments || Top||

#9  My favorite line is:
young trooper"Why us?
Colour sargent:Because we're here,lad.Nobody else just us.
Posted by: raptor || 04/30/2004 8:08 Comments || Top||

#10  This time you're giving us gentle reminders. What happened?

Better medication.
Posted by: Steve || 04/30/2004 8:33 Comments || Top||

#11  im agree on anonymus posters. their all look alike to me.
Posted by: muck4doo || 04/30/2004 9:22 Comments || Top||

#12  I am anonymous2U and I'm staying that way.

Do you have any idea how long it took me to come up w/that, and now you want my brain to explode.

I'm going to Vegas on Monday, can't have my brain explode.

IF I win the big one, then I'll change it.
Posted by: Anonymous2U || 04/30/2004 10:23 Comments || Top||

#13  "I'll make a poster out of you yet, Anonymous."

(Continuing the Zulu theme.)
Posted by: Mike || 04/30/2004 10:57 Comments || Top||

#14  This is why I love the Rantburgers ... when my son was born my dad (who got me interested in military history and Zulu) gave me a t-shirt reading "Mother of Rorke's Drift."
Posted by: Sofia || 04/30/2004 11:03 Comments || Top||

#15  Zulu?
Posted by: BigEd || 04/30/2004 11:04 Comments || Top||

#16  Zulu is a 1964 British film about the Battle of Rourke's Drift in South Africa in 1879. It's a good, rip-snorting stiff-upper-lip adventure based on extraordinary real-life events:

This action was at Rorke's Drift, Wednesday 22- Thursday 23 January, 1879, when some 150 soldiers defended a supply station against some 4000 Zulus, aided by the Martini-Henry rifle 'with some guts behind it'.

Since the Victoria Cross was instigated by Queen Victoria in 1856, only 1354 have been awarded (the double awards for Arthur Martin-Leake, Charles Hazlitt Upham and Noel Godfrey Chavasse are included in the total).

At Rorke's Drift, eleven Victoria Crosses were awarded. Seven to the 2nd Battalion, 24th (2nd Warwickshire) Regiment of Foot, one to the Army Medical Department, one to the Royal Engineers, one to the Commissariat and Transport Department and one to the Natal Native Contingent.


There's an excellent discussion of the battle in one chapter of Victor Davis Hanson's Carnage and Culture.
Posted by: Mike || 04/30/2004 11:18 Comments || Top||

#17  ima a think we need some mealie bags for hummmmveees
Posted by: HalfEmpty || 04/30/2004 12:51 Comments || Top||


-Short Attention Span Theater-
Russian Museum to Exhibit Rasputin’s Penis

Have a look at the photo, must be where the term "hung like a donkey" came from.
The first Russian museum of erotica is opening in St. Petersburg, Russian Nezavisimaya Gazeta daily reports. The museum is founded by Igor Knyazkin, the chief of the prostate research center of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences.

Knyazkin told the newspaper that museums of sex and erotica exist in many European countries and he wanted Russia to be a civilized country with a view on the future and with correct views on erotica.

There is one exhibit in the museum which makes Knyazkin be especially proud of. This is the 30-centimeter preserved penis of Grigory Rasputin. “Having this exhibit, we can stop envying America, where Napoleon Bonaparte’s penis is now kept. 
 Napoleon’s penis is but a small ”pod“ it cannot stand comparison to our organ of 30 centimeters
” the head of the museum said.

Rasputin, nicknamed “Mad Monk” by historians was born in 1869 in Siberia, arrived in St. Petersburg in 1911 and within a few years had become one of the most influential men in government circles. His rise to preeminence was due to his close relationship with Nicholas II’s wife, Alexandra. The heir to the throne suffered from hemophaelia, and only Rasputin could stop the boy’s bleeding. Because of this, Alexandra believed he was a holy man sent to protect Alexis and she kept him close by at all times.

However, many historians point to the unusual cult that Rasputin practiced at the Emperors’ court — a strange mixture of Christianity and sexual practices. Many of the noble women were believed to be in sexual relations with Rasputin, possibly including the Empress.

At the end of 1916, a group of aristocrats decided that Rasputin’s influence had grown too great and that he had to be killed in order to save Russia. They lured him to the palace of one of the princes; fed him poisoned cakes and wine, shot him and then threw him into the frozen river.
Posted by: tipper || 04/30/2004 9:26:55 PM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Nothing more erotic than the century old severed penis of a psychopath.
Posted by: Super Hose || 04/30/2004 21:41 Comments || Top||

#2  we have Bonaparte's dick? Where is that exhibited? Traveling in some ill-begotten flea circus?
Posted by: Frank G || 04/30/2004 21:47 Comments || Top||

#3  Napoleon lived in New Jersey for a while. Maybe it's in some museum there.
Posted by: Mike Sylwester || 04/30/2004 22:37 Comments || Top||

#4  Yeah, I got your Napoleon's penis right here!
Posted by: Jersey Vinny || 04/30/2004 22:41 Comments || Top||

#5  Apparently Rasputin "Did" anything tht moved, including the Queen.

Posted by: BigEd || 05/01/2004 0:24 Comments || Top||


Arabia
Police have foiled dozens of terror attacks’
Saudi police foiled dozens of terror attacks in the kingdom before last week’s suicide bombing in Riyadh, Interior Minister Prince Nayef said in remarks published on Thursday. “The details of those operations will be revealed in the future and will show what role the police have played in saving the country from such evils,” the official Saudi Press Agency quoted Nayef as telling reporters on Wednesday. “Had they taken place, God forbid, (the bombing of) the traffic (and General Security building) and the Nov 8 (attack) would have been nothing in comparison.” Nayef did not elaborate on the nature of the foiled operations.
Posted by: Paul Moloney || 04/30/2004 4:02:10 AM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1 
Saudi police foiled dozens of terror attacks in the kingdom
Maybe the Saudis should ask themselves why the terrorists hate them.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut || 04/30/2004 10:51 Comments || Top||

#2  This illustrates why the law enforcement paradigm to fighting terrorism is inadequate.
Posted by: Ptah || 04/30/2004 13:25 Comments || Top||

#3  Saudi police foiled dozens of terror attacks in the kingdom before last week’s suicide bombing in Riyadh, Interior Minister Prince Nayef said in remarks published on Thursday.

"We just called 'em and asked 'em to lay low until the next time us Saudis get in trouble with Washington..."
Posted by: Pappy || 04/30/2004 22:55 Comments || Top||


Britain
UK Quickly Deporting US Citizen Who Claims Political Asylum
A US-born Muslim cleric who sought asylum in the UK four months ago has been detained and told he may be deported within days.
Imam Ramee Muhammed, 40, a preacher originally from Chicago, applied for asylum in January this year because he says he fears persecution if he returns to the US. But on Friday, days after an article on his case appeared in a Sunday newspaper, he was detained and his claim fast-tracked.

His wife, Haneefa, who is due to give birth any day, fears he may be deported by the end of the week. Speaking at her home in Manchester, Mrs Muhammed, 38, said: "The government is doing what the papers say. No one has come to see if what my husband is claimed to have said is true ... They are playing religious politics."

When Mr Muhammed attended an immigration appointment on Friday he was detained and transferred to London. His wife said they had no warning things would move so quickly. The family, who have eight children, came to the UK in 2001 when Mr Muhammed was offered a job at an Islamic institute in Birmingham. But, fearing persecution if he returned to the US because of the post-September 11 climate, he applied for asylum in January this year - and hit the headlines. An article published on the front page of last week’s Sunday Express, headlined "Maddest asylum plea yet", claimed Mr Muhammed taught Richard Reid - the so-called "shoe bomber"- and had links with the radical preacher Abu Hamza..

Imam Muhammed claims the article is untrue and has complained to the Press Complaints Commission. He admits Richard Reid attended a lecture of his at the Finsbury Park mosque, but says that was six years ago and that he was lecturing on brotherhood. He says he knows Omar Bakri Muhammed, leader of the fringe group al-Muhajiroun, but has no links with him.
Posted by: Mike Sylwester || 04/30/2004 9:43:22 AM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  It is nice to see the western world wising up to the sham asylum claims. Everyone who was granted asylum from Iran or Afghanistan should have their cases reviewed pronto and given a timeline of when they are expected to return to their homeland.
Posted by: ruprecht || 04/30/2004 10:03 Comments || Top||

#2  They are playing religious politics.

They've implemented sharia?
Posted by: Cthulhu Akbar || 04/30/2004 10:06 Comments || Top||

#3  from Iran? Maybe its different in the UK, but in the US most Iranians who have sought asylum are secularists, or supporters of the Shah, who would face serious danger back in Iran.
Posted by: Liberalhawk || 04/30/2004 10:35 Comments || Top||

#4  Guilty by association? If he is not guilty of any crime then why run to the UK? Is he starting to believe his own lies about the U.S.? Good thing the Brits don't!
Posted by: Cyber Sarge || 04/30/2004 10:58 Comments || Top||

#5  The plea for asylum is the least of the UK's or US's problems. The woman is only 38 and she is pregnant with her 9th child! She will keep on having kids until she no longer can (50 or so). At this rate, muslims are going to overun the native population and its culture. This is really frightening!
Posted by: Anonymous4617 || 04/30/2004 13:06 Comments || Top||

#6  they are playing religious politics
I'll take fatwas for $100, Alex!
Posted by: Spot || 04/30/2004 13:56 Comments || Top||

#7  The woman is only 38 and she is pregnant with her 9th child!

Thanks A4617. And there you have it is all wrapped up in a nice clean, depressing box. Lot'sa different kinds of bio-weapons.

Posted by: Shipman || 04/30/2004 16:49 Comments || Top||

#8  What crime has the Imam committed? I know the Imam, he has taken nearly 35 at risk youth from the Ghettos of America abroad to study Arabic, and Traditional Islamic Theology.Many of whom were former gangsters and drug sellers. he was feautured in a World-wide documentary on the rise of Islam called Planet Islam, filmed in 1996 by the BBC. He and Community were shown closing down drug houses, stopping crime, and educating the down trodden. He was a former US Marine and Federal Bureau of Prisons Senior Officer Specialist. He has established 6 Masaajid in America, one Islamic School, and has encouraged hundreds of students from the West to go abroad and study Islam. In the past he has been outspoken against the illegal jewish state, and the slaughter of Muslims in Phillistine, Bosnia, Rawanda, Philiphines,Kashmir and all the upsurping of Muslim land, oil,natural resorces, and racism.Imam Muhammad is the Head of Jamaatul Qadir Educational Trust, at www.jamaatulqadir.co.uk. Which promotes the proper teaching of Islam from classical sources. He is a very motivated speaker, and full of compassion. He is a decendant of Muslim Afican Slaves, and Native Americans both of which were terrorized by the most vicous Paulean jewish scum the earth has ever seen, he is one of the victims of American physical and pcycological slavery that has never ended. He is the author of Why Love and The weapon of truth between truth and falsehood, and many videos and cassettes. He case should be heard.
Posted by: Anonymous5203 || 06/13/2004 12:14 Comments || Top||

#9  Leaving all of the fluffy bits aside, A5203, the issue is the root of his asylum claim: that he will be persecuted in the US. Period.

Most of your post is your opinion on his other "activities" - some of which could only appeal to a fellow Muslim. Some of your post is purest Grade A bullshit. I'm a Comanche and I find the drivel you posted regards historical events to be your overactive victim mentality - decidedly not factual. In those particulars you (and your buddy) are laughable idiotarians and liars.

And of course, his case WILL be heard - we're not talking about some backassward barbaric Islamic country of arbitrary fuckwits - there will be full judicial oversight, any and all rights will be protected, and the laws will be followed.

Your post did not help your buddy in any way because the audience here isn't a bunch of dimwitted blind Lefty dipshits consumed by imagined guilt and self-hate. Play your tape elsewhere for the desired effect.
Posted by: .com || 06/13/2004 12:30 Comments || Top||

#10  oops - almost stepped all over your fisking .com, thks! How many lecturers remember someone attending a lecture six yrs ago? His lies stink
Posted by: Frank G || 06/13/2004 12:57 Comments || Top||


Terror Fears Prompt UK to Test ID Cards
Posted by: Mark Espinola || 04/30/2004 00:50 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:


China-Japan-Koreas
Ryongchon - Nuclear Trigger for American Conscription?
Don't bogart the White Slag, dude!

Viewed through the eyes of desperate Zionist neocons like Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld and Sharon, if North Korea could be successfully provoked into action by a small tactical nuclear strike deep inside its own territory, the most likely response would be 5,000 North Korean artillery shells per hour raining down on Seoul, the capital of South Korea.
Yeah, that'd do it.

Within days or weeks, the United States of America would once again be obliged to protect South Korea and the rest of the western world from the Communist "Red Menace", this time artificially reborn as "Axis of Evil" member North Korea. Clearly this new 'patriotic defensive' action against Korea would require hundreds of thousands of American conscripts.
No, it'd require a couple of guys turning keys at the same time, but please, continue.

Although Iraq is where the conscripts are really needed, no sane American would accept the illegal invasion of Iraq as justification for conscription, because all have already worked out that this stupefying atrocity in the Middle East has nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction, nothing to do with Saddam Hussein, and absolutely nothing to do with American national security. Trying to enforce conscription today in a visible attempt to obtain the extra 500,000 troops needed to steal Iraq's oil reserves for the Zionist madmen on Wall Street, would simply result in every campus across America exploding into justifiably violent protests.
Which is why the only people asking for a draft seem to be Democrats.

Because the photographs and other hard evidence in this report completely rule out an "accident" in Ryongchon, we are left with the harsh reality that one of the most important strategic locations in the whole of North Korea was deliberately nuked with a relatively low-yield weapon, by a nation or nations currently unknown.
Guess who?

This inevitably draws us to ask who has the opportunity, motive and method for the attack, or, put another way, to ask which nations on earth have the nuclear weapons, stealth delivery systems, and the political need to vaporize more than a thousand North Koreans civilians in a cowardly sneak attack reminiscent of Pearl Harbor.
(raises hand) That would be me, I dun it, and I'm glad!

Nowadays there are dozens of nations with declared or undeclared nuclear weapons, but only a handful with long range precision stealth delivery systems, the latter limited to America, Russia, China, France and Great Britain. Of these five possible candidates for the sneak nuclear attack, only America has openly labeled North Korea a member of the mythical "Axis of Evil", and, equally, warned openly of horrific but unspecified military reprisals if North Korea does not stop supplying missile delivery systems to Iran. Thus before we even take into account America's current perilous military predicament in Iraq, there is only one candidate out of the five left with the necessary motive for the attack.
He goes on, and on, and on, but you get the idea.
Posted by: Steve || 04/30/2004 11:05:29 AM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  only a handful with long range precision stealth delivery systems, the latter limited to America, Russia, China, France and Great Britain.

He missed out the Zionist Cabal. Read the rest of the site and you will understand.
Posted by: Phil B || 04/30/2004 11:27 Comments || Top||

#2  Viewed through the eyes of desperate Zionist neocons like..

I stopped right there.
Posted by: Bomb-a-rama || 04/30/2004 11:29 Comments || Top||

#3  A long time ago, the US did a lot of research on using nuclear devices, not weapons per se, to dig long trenches. The idea was that they might be used to dig a new Panama Canal, for example.
That being said, if a reasonably small number of "trenching" nukes were used on the mountains within arty range of Seoul, they might effectively 'strip mine' out even heavily fortified, reinforced positions, but with relatively little residual contamination.

But Dick Cheney has already applied the screws to China to sit on Fearless Leader's nuclear ambitions, them getting in the way of China's own territorial and economic ambitions. So if they must, don't be surprised if the guns facing Seoul prove to be as useless as the Maginot Line. That is, pointing in the wrong direction.
Posted by: Anonymoose || 04/30/2004 11:35 Comments || Top||

#4  {breathing heavily} The jooos the jooos - they have listening devices in my walls, under my bed, and aaaugh in my gold crown in molar #30!

Help Meeeee -----
Posted by: BigEd || 04/30/2004 11:37 Comments || Top||

#5  I made the mistake of checking out this guy's site. Zowie. He really, really needs to go back on his meds.
Posted by: Jonathan || 04/30/2004 11:39 Comments || Top||

#6  OK, who ordered the moonbat, extra bark?
Posted by: Mitch H. || 04/30/2004 11:51 Comments || Top||

#7  Oh no, the dreaded 57-mm spin-stabilized rockets! We're doomed!
Posted by: CCat || 04/30/2004 11:58 Comments || Top||

#8  That is either the biggest spoof site I've yet seen (like the false news story plants on T.Heinz Kerry's Indymedia), or someone is definitely off his medications for manic paranoid schizophrenia.

It boggles the mind that anyone could even believe 1/10 ofwhat is on that site is true, much less gobbling the whole articles.
Posted by: OldSpook || 04/30/2004 12:20 Comments || Top||

#9  I think the KCNA found a new speechwriter!
Posted by: Raj || 04/30/2004 12:25 Comments || Top||

#10  At first I thought this was from the New York Times, but then I realized it was too well written.
Posted by: Matt || 04/30/2004 12:50 Comments || Top||

#11  This guy must be seeing a whole team of doctors. I especially liked the "million man Mahdi Army."
Posted by: Tibor || 04/30/2004 12:51 Comments || Top||

#12  One thing I noticed when I was looking at the enhanced images from the "after" shot is that the damage was quite directional. Almost all of the power of the blast was directed to the right on the image, toward the city. Very little was directed to the left, toward the rest of the railyard. I'll be looking at the "before" image posted after I left yesterday, to see if there's a geographic reason for that. If not, I'll have to do some serious thinking about what might have been contained in those railcars.
Posted by: Old Patriot || 04/30/2004 14:36 Comments || Top||

#13  LP Gas Old Pat.

Heavy reailcar underneath. Fiberglass/steel contrainer riding it.

Gasoline car explodes nearby, topples LPGas car, lpgas overpressurizes and ruptures then explodes - making for a very directional blast, especially to one side or out the endcaps. If the cars derailed, they probably topples to the same side (toward the city) and the explosion was channeld in that direction using the car chassis as a baseplate, kind of like the old backplated shaped charges.

No need to go tin-foil-hat. Its simple physics.
Posted by: OldSpook || 04/30/2004 15:08 Comments || Top||

#14  but only a handful with long range precision stealth delivery systems, the latter limited to America, Russia, China, France and Great Britain

i guess china has leaped a decade in its stealth delivery technology and france has finally updated it 70's era nuclear force
Posted by: Dan || 04/30/2004 15:53 Comments || Top||

#15  Read an article yesterday where a guy questioned what happened to Kimmie? Nobody has seen him since the accident. I don't know if that's true but I haven't seen him and I would think he'd want to rant out in public and blame the west or something over he explosion.
Posted by: Ruprecht || 04/30/2004 16:32 Comments || Top||

#16  Ruprecht-

I refer everyone to the 1970's Woody Allen movie, "Sleeper"

The leader had died in an explosion, and all they could find is the nose which they wanted to clone into a whole new leader.

These guys are that crazy? Probably Not. But the thought must be crossing their minds. Especially if they found the nose.
Posted by: BigEd || 04/30/2004 16:39 Comments || Top||

#17  The Alcoa agents are on the move. Go long, very long.
Posted by: Shipman || 04/30/2004 16:53 Comments || Top||

#18 
Comment: Rail tankers(in the U.S.)are designed to blow out the ends.The theory is that this directs the blast up/down the track limiting destruction along the tracks.
That is the theory anyway
Saw a training film,there was a tanker car in Northern Az.on fire.When the car blew the ends were what blew.There was a firefighting crew onsite,the only one who lived was the guy on the Ladder truck and they found him blown a couple of hundred yards away.
Posted by: raptor || 04/30/2004 18:36 Comments || Top||


Bush rejects direct dialogue with N Korea
US President George W Bush will not enter into direct talks with North Korea to end its nuclear drive, his spokesperson has said amid seemingly new enthusiasm by Pyongyang to end the standoff. "That approach didn't work previously," White House spokesperson Scott McClellan said yesterday.

He said Bush believed it was "important to work through the multilateral six-party talks to bring about a peaceful diplomatic resolution to this concern."

North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il's visit to China last week appeared to have given greater momentum to the talks between China, South Korea, Japan, the United States, North Korea and Russia to resolve the nuclear issue. Pyongyang earlier announced it would attend May 12 talks in Beijing aimed at setting up a fresh round of the six-nation negotiations by the end of June.

A North Korean foreign ministry spokesman had said Pyongyang wanted to discuss compensation for freezing its nuclear programs at the working group meeting.
Another way of trying to extort us for food and oil.
John Kerry, Bush's presumptive rival in the November presidential elections, charged on Wednesday that the incumbent had failed in his policy on North Korea. Kerry wants direct talks with Pyongyang on a range of issues, not only the nuclear question.
Thus giving Kimmie everything he wants. Oh JFK, you are so unsophisticated.
But McClellan, citing North Korea's broken promise, rejected any notion that Bush was willing to bargain on compensations for North Korea and open a direct dialogue with North Korea.
Posted by: Steve White || 04/30/2004 1:51:45 AM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  anyone hear from Kimmy yet???
Posted by: B || 04/30/2004 9:47 Comments || Top||

#2  Pres. Bush knows "dear leader" comes up a little short. . .
Posted by: BigEd || 04/30/2004 11:06 Comments || Top||

#3  US President George W Bush will not enter into direct talks with North Korea to end its nuclear drive, his spokesperson has said amid seemingly new enthusiasm by Pyongyang to end the standoff. "That approach didn't work previously," White House spokesperson Scott McClellan said yesterday.

Strange how GWB can recognize that some particular approach "didn't work previously", and yet still propose another illegal alien amnesty after the previous one didn't solve the problems it was supposed to.
Posted by: Bomb-a-rama || 04/30/2004 12:57 Comments || Top||

#4  Bombarama : The President's vision in the Eastern hemisphere (War on Terror, and Korea) is crystal clear.
His vision in the Western Hemisphere (our southern border) is a tad murky.
Posted by: BigEd || 04/30/2004 13:30 Comments || Top||

#5  yea I wish he quit trying to get votes and just close the border
Posted by: djohn66 || 04/30/2004 15:24 Comments || Top||

#6  BOOM!
just kiddin
Posted by: GWB || 04/30/2004 16:55 Comments || Top||


Down Under
Med Student Says Patients Considered Him a Frog, So He Became a Terrorist
When Izhar Ul-Haque enrolled in a terrorist training camp in Pakistan last year, he was fed up with Westerners and their "animal type of lifestyle", a court heard yesterday. In a letter to his parents, Mr Ul-Haque says he wanted to undergo weapons and combat training and eventually expected to die a martyr for a Pakistani terrorist group. When he returned to Sydney after the camp, Customs officials found 30 books in his luggage including handwritten notes about rocket launchers, landmines, tanks and multi-purpose machineguns.

Mr Ul-Haque, 21, was charged earlier this month by the Federal-NSW Police Joint Counter-Terrorism Task Force with training with the group Lashkar-e-Taiba. The taskforce is investigating French terror suspect Willie Brigitte, who also attended LET training camps before his six-month stay in Sydney. Police have not alleged Mr Ul-Haque knew Brigitte.

Mr Ul-Haque told investigators before his arrest that the three-week camp was "the first step in the ladder" and simply gave members of the Pakistani community a taste of jihad as part of their religion. "It’s like kindergarten," Mr Ul-Haque allegedly told investigators, the court heard. ....

The court heard Mr Ul-Haque had been frustrated at failing his second year of medicine at the University of NSW, as well as unhappy experiences with patients during his training in Sydney hospitals. "The Western patients in hospitals look at me as though I’m a newt frog," he says in one letter, the court was told.
But now we know better, don't we? Guess how we see you now?
He travelled to Pakistan, where his parents now live, before joining the camp. After reading his letter, his father and his brother went to the camp to try to convince him to return to Australia. Deciding against the combat lifestyle, he returned to Sydney to resume his studies. ....
Posted by: Mike Sylwester || 04/30/2004 12:25:15 AM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  The mind boggles. You just can't make this stuff up!
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut || 04/30/2004 0:31 Comments || Top||

#2  Yeah, if any of those Aussie guards was friends with/had relaitves who died in Bali, he's gonna wish he was a frog in a bog
Posted by: BigEd || 04/30/2004 0:40 Comments || Top||

#3  A white person in a white-dominated and white-centric society is not in a position to feel the pain of a young muslim student. Being non-white, non-favoured race, non-favoured culture and anti-muslim world environment can make a person do drastic things.

Posted by: Anonymous4681 || 04/30/2004 0:46 Comments || Top||

#4  Terrorism and the constant rationalizations and excuses offered by their elitist supporters can make us do drastic things. It's about to get a lot worse.
As a terrorist enabler and sympathizer, Anonymous 4681 you are in no position to feel the pain YOU are causing. That will change, though; a lot and very soon.
The fifth column is responsible and it must pay.
Posted by: Atomic Conspiracy || 04/30/2004 0:53 Comments || Top||

#5  As a med student this clown occupied a fairly priveleged in western society. That some minor affronts and his own failure become an excuse for joining a band of savage murderers is indicative not of oppression but of pathological narcissism.

Of course, this is a common enough shortcoming, which is perhaps why other authoritarian narcissists and power-seekers have been mobilized into a mass movement hell-bent on showing solidarity with the terrorists. Like attracts like.
Go charge some Mumia shirts at the mall, Anonymous, or have a talk with your trust-fund manager, your drivel is laughable here.
Posted by: Atomic Conspiracy || 04/30/2004 1:05 Comments || Top||

#6  Hey Atomic, lets let A4681 talk to an Aussie who lost friends or family in Bali?
Posted by: BigEd || 04/30/2004 1:11 Comments || Top||

#7  Strange, I was a med student once, long ago, and my patients never made me feel like a newt frog. Though they did make me feel pretty stoopid at times over my lack of knowledge. Guess I should have put down my stethoscope and whipped out a rod picked up a rifle.
Posted by: Steve White || 04/30/2004 1:17 Comments || Top||

#8  Good idea, Ed.
"white-centric" is hilariously illiterate and pretentious.
Posted by: Atomic Conspiracy || 04/30/2004 1:20 Comments || Top||

#9  Steve : put down my stethoscope and picked up a rifle.

Oddly enough, my Doctor is a Harley ridin' Vietnam Vet who started his medical career as an Army medic. You don't know how close you are. . . .
Posted by: BigEd || 04/30/2004 1:21 Comments || Top||

#10  Steve White, a little fishing is a good thing. Put down the gun and back slowly away. Pick up the rod and slowly breath, yes breath. Now doesnt that feel better?
Posted by: Lucky || 04/30/2004 1:28 Comments || Top||

#11  Anonymous4681...especially when you hail from the religion of blame peace.

I hope you can learn to get over it. When I was growing up, we had a little song for self pitying saps, it goes like this:
nobody likes me
everybody hates me
I think I'll go and eat dirt.
Posted by: B || 04/30/2004 3:25 Comments || Top||

#12  looks like our friend, Kermit, took that song to heart.
Posted by: B || 04/30/2004 3:26 Comments || Top||

#13  B, please do not associate the real Kermit with this moron. I have alot of respect for the little green guy and I find any association offensive.
Posted by: Igs || 04/30/2004 3:51 Comments || Top||

#14  you have my deepest apologies.
Posted by: B || 04/30/2004 3:57 Comments || Top||

#15  I'm in China, and every time I go outside the house, people stare at me like I'm some kind of carnival freak show. The rude ones crack jokes about my hairy arms and chest. Right in front of me. Somehow, I don't feel the need to pick up a rifle and start killing them. Go figure. I guess my mama raised me wrong.
Posted by: gromky || 04/30/2004 5:46 Comments || Top||

#16  THEY come to OUR lands, look for excuses to hate us, then try to kill us? WTF?

Long live the Reconquista!
Posted by: Hammer of the Moors || 04/30/2004 7:04 Comments || Top||

#17  #3,Yeap.And the Menendez boys,Clebolt&Harris,ands Jeffery Dalmer were just poor, mistreated,and misunderstood.It is not thier fault they slaughtered those people.No,no,of course not it was White dominated society.
Oh and lets not forget,those poor boys,the D.C. Snipers.

What an ass you are,Anonymous4681.
Posted by: raptor || 04/30/2004 8:08 Comments || Top||

#18  They looked at him as if he were a frog? Why, did he have a French accent?
Posted by: Mitch H. || 04/30/2004 9:08 Comments || Top||

#19  raptor - that's why he / she posted anonymously. Prolly Anti-War or other similar "deeply sensitive" person. As someone who has lived most of the last decade as a stranger in a strange land I could say something similar to this, but then I try to keep my asshat quotient down. Just for practice, you understand. Of course, lol, had I been 30 yrs younger, my experiences in IzzoidLand might have prompted me to join up with Jarhead, heh. ;->
Posted by: .com || 04/30/2004 9:19 Comments || Top||

#20  he was fed up with Westerners and their "animal type of lifestyle"

Looks like he consideres us animals, too.
Posted by: Robert Crawford || 04/30/2004 9:50 Comments || Top||

#21  dear anon 4681

while at some level i am sympathetic to your concerns, i would like to point out that we have not seen a terrorist movement emerge among blacks and hispanics in the US, among non-muslim african immigrants in Europe, among West Indians in the UK, etc, despite all of them suffering similar, if not worse, discrimination. Clearly there are other basic problems in the muslim world that drive the choice to become a terrorist rather than, say, a political activist.

I would note in passing that one of the side benefits of the events in the last few years has been that many Americans have come to a new appreciation of the patriotism and courage of the hispanic and african american communities. ISTM that the WOT is, in many ways, for those communities what World War 2 was for the southern and eastern european immigrant communities.
Posted by: Liberalhawk || 04/30/2004 10:00 Comments || Top||

#22  If life was so bad in Australia he could easily have gone somewhere else without fighting Jihad. He could have stayed in Pakistan where they probably need doctors. This guy is an idiot and folks like Anonymous4681 are his enablers.
Posted by: ruprecht || 04/30/2004 10:08 Comments || Top||

#23  The Western patients in hospitals look at me as though I’m a frog.

I can sympathize. Somebody mistakes me for a Frenchman, and it's go time.
Posted by: Cthulhu Akbar || 04/30/2004 10:09 Comments || Top||

#24  no picture? maybe he really looks like a frog? I know of a guy in Ramallah, place called the Muqata, who apparently looks just like a fish with a dish towel and fan belt on his head
Posted by: Frank G || 04/30/2004 10:17 Comments || Top||

#25  --A white person in a white-dominated and white-centric society is not in a position to feel the pain of a young muslim student. Being non-white, non-favoured race, non-favoured culture and anti-muslim world environment can make a person do drastic things.--

So, he could have moved to where he was comfortable, didn't have to train to kill us.
Posted by: Anonymous2U || 04/30/2004 10:34 Comments || Top||

#26 

Izhar Ul-Haque ?

Posted by: BigEd || 04/30/2004 10:57 Comments || Top||

#27  (kermit-dee-frog voice)

"it's not easy being green..."

(/kermit-dee-frog voice)
Posted by: Querent || 04/30/2004 12:20 Comments || Top||

#28  I've seen him die many times but never slay us.
Posted by: Waldorf & Astoria || 04/30/2004 16:56 Comments || Top||


Europe
Macedonian Police Pretend to Fight Terrorists
Macedonian officials have admitted that seven alleged Pakistani militants killed in March 2002 were in fact illegal immigrants shot in cold blood. They said four officers in the security services had been charged with their murder, while former Interior Minister Ljube Boskovski may also face charges. At the time, the interior ministry said they had been killed after trying to ambush police in the capital, Skopje. But a police spokeswoman said they had in fact been shot in a "staged murder".

When the incident was reported more than two years ago, it was claimed that a new front had opened up in the war on terror. The Macedonian interior ministry said the seven men of Pakistani origin were killed after opening fire on a police patrol with machine guns. Mr Boskovski said the dead men had been planning attacks on vital installations and embassies. ....

Now the public prosecutor’s office has brought charges against officers involved in the case .... Police spokeswoman Mirjana Konteska told the Associated Press news agency that the victims were illegal immigrants who had been lured into Macedonia by promises that they would be taken to western Europe. She said they were transported to the Rastanski Lozja area, about 5km north of Skopje, where they were surrounded and gunned down by police. .....
Posted by: Mike Sylwester || 04/30/2004 11:55:53 PM || Comments || Link || [1 views] Top|| File under:

#1  I though there was something suspicious when a Pakistani newspaper translated some of the materials found on the 'terrorists', and found that it was both Shi'ia and Sunni pamphlets. Sunni and Shi'ite terrorists don't cooperate in Pakistan.
Posted by: Paul Moloney || 05/01/2004 0:33 Comments || Top||


Vatican says no to churches used as mosques
EFL
Can a Christian church be used as a mosque by Muslims? This seems “problematic” to the Vatican. The polemic of using Cordoba’s cathedral as a mosque has gathered the attention of top officials within the Roman curia. Yet unlike what was stated by Islamic representatives, no such formal request has been advanced to the Roman Catholic Church.
Islamic representatives lied, people...
AsiaNews, which follows the developments of Islam across the globe, interviewed Archbishop. Michael Fitzgerald, president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialog. Archbishop Fitzgerald advises Cordoba’s Muslim population to “accept history” without wanting to get back or “take revenge” on the Church, in the same way that Catholics do not try and reclaim buildings that have passed under Islamic rule and jurisdiction.
Accept history!? Bwawawawa...
Posted by: Dragon Fly || 04/30/2004 6:34:09 AM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Damn! You mean someone in the Catholic Church is wising up? And speaking straight instead of weasling?

About time.

Broadcast this throughout the Moslem world. Seething in 5, 4, 3....
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut || 04/30/2004 10:50 Comments || Top||

#2  I still think we need an office pool of when we think the fundies will hit the Vatican. Thats the motherload of all targets. I just hope the Vatican and Italy have thought of that.
Posted by: Yosemite Sam || 04/30/2004 10:55 Comments || Top||

#3  Hey, maybe we can get the use of the hall for Black Mass on Thursdays, huh?
Posted by: mojo || 04/30/2004 11:11 Comments || Top||

#4  Hey, maybe we can get the use of the hall for Black Mass on Thursdays, huh?

Ummm, sorry, the Aztec's have it booked for Thurday. It'll take a while to clean up after them, can I pencil you in for Tuesday?
Posted by: Steve || 04/30/2004 11:43 Comments || Top||

#5  Sam - We may indeed need a "pool" as you suggest.

But doesn't this beg the question about who is on the "Crusade" if they are demanding a small corner of the room to spread a rug.

Of course if they blow up the Vatican all defication will hit the motorized rotary blade device, because, people will start talking about nuking Mecca. We don't want to open that pandora's box!
Posted by: BigEd || 04/30/2004 12:26 Comments || Top||

#6  Maybe we can reclaim the great mosque in Istanbul from its days as a Basilica and Cathedral back when it was COnstantinople and the center of the eastern Roman Church.

Fair is fair...

(they'd be apoplectic if we brought Eastern Orthodox Iconography in and started chanting the Rosary and Our Father, etc).
Posted by: OldSpook || 04/30/2004 12:42 Comments || Top||

#7  One thing to warn the Islamac Mullah's who promote all this Moslem anti-Christian violence about: Don't piss off the Catholics - especially if you hit the Vatican. You'd never know what hit you. And we'd not stop.

Especially those of us of Irish and Scottish descent. (c.f. the history of Ireland and history of Scotland). We pretty much invented fanatacism. Check the history books as far back as the Romans.

We don't seethe. We gear up and kill people until the enemy is either all dead, or rolls over and gives in. Even if it takes decades. Your worst nightmare is a cold-eyed Irishman who has come to slit your throat in the night. He'll do it without pity and continue with a smile.

And thats not counting the boil-over you'd have from S. America.

In the end, we'd rebuild the Vatican quickly, and your ancestors would be left for centuries talking about the wasteland where Mecca used to be, and how Islam passed like Paganism, into obscurity and meaninglessness
Posted by: OldSpook || 04/30/2004 12:58 Comments || Top||

#8  Of course if they blew up the Vatican there are some people in Northern Ireland that would probably jump for joy. If they were to hit a major religous site of Christianity I personally would expcet it to be in Israel. That way the Jooos would get blamed for not ensuring the sirtes security
Posted by: cheaderhead || 04/30/2004 13:00 Comments || Top||

#9  Old Spook : I am a Protestant married to an Orthodox Christian, and I have some Scottish and Irish ancestry. I know about Saints Patrick and Columba, but your words are non-sequitor to a Jihadi.
Posted by: BigEd || 04/30/2004 13:10 Comments || Top||

#10  I think the Vatican got a look at those short-term "apartments" used during the hajj and saw the quantity of goat blood dripping from the balconies.
Posted by: .com || 04/30/2004 13:18 Comments || Top||

#11  just like to see a christian go to a mosque in mecca or any muslim city and want to worship.....that would go over real well with the religion of peace and tolerance
Posted by: Dan || 04/30/2004 14:41 Comments || Top||

#12  #6 Maybe we can reclaim the great mosque in Istanbul from its days as a Basilica and Cathedral back when it was COnstantinople and the center of the eastern Roman Church.

(they'd be apoplectic if we brought Eastern Orthodox Iconography in and started chanting the Rosary and Our Father, etc).


Actually Hagia Sophia, the basilica you are talking about, is now a museum, not a mosque. And the Turkish archeological service has begun uncovering the wonderful mosaics that were whitewashed when they turned the place into a mosque. If you are ever in the part of the world, Hagia Sophia (the Church of Holy Wisdom) is certainly worth a visit.
Posted by: MW || 04/30/2004 14:50 Comments || Top||

#13  The unbelievable gall of these asswipes wanting to use MY church. F you.

Touch the Vatican and you ALL die.
Posted by: RMcLeod || 04/30/2004 15:13 Comments || Top||

#14  RMcLeod - As a non-Catholic Christian, I am with you. These terds are putting up a straw man to try to inflaim the so-called Arab street. . .
Posted by: BigEd || 04/30/2004 15:22 Comments || Top||

#15  in interes of peace ima know of several pine tree can be used for minets in tide swamp excepting in holy months of november-january
Posted by: HalfEmpty || 04/30/2004 17:02 Comments || Top||

#16  MW, true. I was raised in the Orthodox church & had a chance to see the mosaics that are left.

Of course, the huge Islamic slogans hung about the sanctuary did sort of change the tenor of the place from the old days ...

OS, your comment reminded me of a favorite song of mine penned from the son of Irish immigrants to the south side of Chicago:

If the day ever comes when I should have to shoot a gun
Well, it won't be done for money and it won't be done for fun.
Though I pray each day that such a thing should never come to pass
If you tamper with me liberties, then buddy that's your ass.
For a gun is just an instrument like any other tool
And to be afraid to use it was to be a bloody fool.
So before you come to visit me, remember where I'm from
For I'll help you get to heaven if that day should come.
Posted by: rkb || 04/30/2004 18:04 Comments || Top||


France Struggles Against Foreign Moslem Clerics Who Foster Terrorists
... France has long maintained one of the strictest antiterrorism programs in Europe, in part because the country was hit early by Islamist terror and because it has the largest Muslim population on the Continent. Many other countries in Europe have been far more tolerant in allowing radical discourse to flourish in their mosques. But making such a hard-line stance stick is difficult, even here in a country that has been more willing than most of its European neighbors to limit free speech in the interest of a calm and cohesive society....

Part of the problem is a dearth of domestically trained clerics to lead congregations of European-born Muslims. As a result, mosques like that in Vénissieux often have to rely on imported imams or self-proclaimed clerics who espouse fundamentalist beliefs that grate against Europe’s more tolerant societies. .... Only about 10 percent of the imams preaching in France’s mosques and prayer rooms are citizens, and half do not speak French, according to the Interior Ministry.

The issue has become more pressing in the 10 years since a wave of Islamist terrorism swept France and has continued to spread around the world. The fundamentalist clerics provided inspiration and support for Islamists returning from Afghanistan and Eastern Europe jihads .... They have also helped prepare fresh recruits from among Europe’s frustrated, disenfranchised second-generation immigrant youths now rediscovering their religious roots. ....

In September 1995, the police killed an Algerian Islamist in a shootout near Lyon after recovering his fingerprints from an unexploded bomb found on the tracks of the high-speed rail line between Lyon and Paris. The man, believed to have been behind a spate of bombings that terrorized Paris earlier that year, had attended a fundamentalist mosque in Vaulx-en-Velin, Lyon’s other principal working-class suburb with a concentration of Muslims.

In January this year, the police arrested six men from Vénissieux who were alleged to be part of a terrorist group linked to Al Qaeda that had planned a chemical weapons attack in Paris in 2002. One of the men taken into custody ran a small radical prayer room in town, and another was leading an effort to expand the mosque at which the now-expelled Mr. Bouziane preached.

Two Vénissieux men are among people taken prisoner two years ago in Afghanistan and are now detained at the United States naval station in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

France has tried to regulate its five million Muslims by creating a national advisory body to address issues like the training of clerics and to act as the Muslim representative in dealing with the government. But the country’s most extreme fundamentalists have refused to take part. ....

Mr. Bouziane has preached at several mosques in and around Lyon since arriving in France from Algeria in 1979. After a six-month stint in Saudi Arabia, he began preaching at the Vénissieux mosque, an unassuming gray concrete box a block from the town’s largest housing development. The imam’s extreme views were well known among Muslims in the region and drew the attention of the local authorities last year after he reportedly issued a fatwa, or religious edict, calling for jihad against American interests in France. The Interior Ministry issued an expulsion order in February, but did not immediately execute it. Then, in early April, a local publication, Lyon Mag, published an interview with Mr. Bouziane in which he spoke about his support for the Koran’s teaching that adulterous women should be stoned and that it was a man’s right to strike his wife if she was unfaithful. .... France’s national press picked up the article, and within days the Interior Ministry executed the expulsion order. Mr. Bouziane was put on a plane to Algiers, where he was apparently detained for questioning.

But the expulsion drew sharp criticism from many Muslims across France, who saw it as part of a broader attack on Muslims by the French state. .... In the housing projects near Mr. Bouziane’s mosque, a young man with a closely cropped beard said he thought that the cleric had done nothing wrong. "If my wife cheats on me, I have the right to correct her," he said, "and not just with a slap on the bottom, but with a gunshot."
Posted by: Mike Sylwester || 04/30/2004 8:55:54 AM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  France Struggles Against Foreign Moslem Clerics Who Foster Terrorists

Seeya Jacques.

Oh, and have fun.
Posted by: Bomb-a-rama || 04/30/2004 11:28 Comments || Top||


Zapatero Urges Broader U.N. Role in Iraq
PARIS (AP) - Spain's prime minister expressed strong backing for French and German opposition to U.S. policy in Iraq Thursday, urging a broader United Federation of Planets U.N. role to help stabilize the country.

Wrapping up trips to Paris and Berlin, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero echoed French and German approaches toward the Mideast nation, while moving his country further from its recent alliance with the United States on Iraq. "We are prepared, in the U.N. Security Council, to make all the diplomatic efforts so that Iraq can rediscover peace and stability," Zapatero told reporters after meeting with French President Jacques Chirac.
Now that you've hightailed it out, of course.
The Socialist Zapatero is of a different political stripe than the conservative Chirac.
Zappie's stripe is yellow.
But their two countries' views have come together, as Zapatero withdraws Spanish troops from Iraq. His predecessor Jose Maria Aznar was a top U.S. ally in Iraq. "Everybody knows that I disagreed with the previous government over the Iraq intervention, and that I have brought home the Spanish troops," he said.
But they'll expect the UN to send someone else's troops.
On Wednesday, the last 260 of the 1,300 Spanish troops who participated in the U.S.-led occupation returned home. Another 1,000 soldiers remain in Iraq to pack up military hardware to send home. In a Madrid ceremony on Thursday marking the end of Spain's mission in Iraq, Spanish Defense Minister Jose Bono said his country will not send in any more soldiers.

Chirac, who appeared at a news conference with the Spaniard, appeared to welcome a shift in Spain's foreign policy, emphasizing a "very strongly reinforced" cooperation among France, Germany and Spain and "other partners" on issues ranging from north Africa, the Middle East and Iraq.
"We will surrender jointly!"
Zapatero, in his first visit to Paris since taking office April 18, also said the two countries would unite in a European Union that is "active, dynamic, unified, strong and free of ulterior motives."
That lets out the French.
"Spain will therefore have an attitude of servitude cooperation and joint work with Berlin and Paris," he said.
Posted by: Steve White || 04/30/2004 12:28:47 AM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  We have decided to pull out of the venture but we want to maintain our spot on the board of directors.
Posted by: Super Hose || 04/30/2004 1:14 Comments || Top||

#2  SH..lol!
Posted by: B || 04/30/2004 3:33 Comments || Top||

#3  ...Spanish Defense Minister Jose Bono said his country will not send in any more soldiers.

Simply put: then STFU
Posted by: Bulldog || 04/30/2004 3:44 Comments || Top||

#4  The UN is enbroiled in a MASSIVE scandal concerning the Iraq Oil for Palaces, Weapons Food program, have been robbing the Iraqis for years and this is the bunch Bambi Shoemaker Zapatero wants in charge?
Posted by: Ben || 04/30/2004 4:40 Comments || Top||

#5  There is probably a point, in each generation, where the it's "group think" is put to a test.

In the baby boom - I'd say that the UNSCAM is it. Those who are free thinkers will say that the UN is corrupt and look for new solutions. Those stuck in their era will deperately try to revive the "Nixon, Republicans and Viet Nam are the root of all evil" meme.

Zapatero, Kerry, Clintons, Kennedy etc. are stuck in the record groove, playing the same "VietNam" chord over and over. It's tired, they are tired, and I am tired. But fortunately for every winter there is a spring...and as I sign off, I would like to say that it looks to me that, no matter what happens in the short run, the frozen mentality of the left will finally melt away and the spring will bring new life, new ideas and hopefully a bountiful harvest of freedom and prosperity. Good night everyone. Stay safe.
Posted by: B || 04/30/2004 5:02 Comments || Top||

#6  It's quite simple: no investment, no say.

Zapatero sure does have nerve tho.
Posted by: Bomb-a-rama || 04/30/2004 13:02 Comments || Top||


Spanish Police Arrest Algerian Terror Suspect
MADRID (Reuters) - Spanish police arrested an Algerian man Thursday suspected of links to international terrorism, but not in connection with the Madrid train bombings that killed 191 people, a police source said. Police arrested the man in Barcelona as he arrived from Turkey, the source said. No further details were immediately available.

Spain has stepped up security at its borders and at key public places in the wake of the March 11 attacks on packed commuter trains.
Posted by: Mark Espinola || 04/30/2004 12:00:00 AM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  The only trouble is - Zapatero has probably instructed that all these prisoners be kept together, and that they learn to sing the song Kum-By-Ya as a Chorus. He probably thinks this will make them less violent. If the above is true he'd want to come by the prison to hear them sing it in the near future.
Posted by: BigEd || 04/30/2004 0:29 Comments || Top||


Home Front: WoT
More good VDH - Questions to Lincoln, September 1, 1864
Posted by: eLarson || 04/30/2004 16:00 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:


Robert Baer - The Intelligence War
This is an OpEd from WSJ.com, posted 4/27. The link died, so here is the full text, but it’s not too long.

To understand the state of U.S. intelligence before Sept. 11, read the now famous declassified Presidential Daily Brief of Aug. 6, 2001. As you read, though, keep in mind that when it comes to finished intelligence, PDBs are the crown jewels. They meld the best information from the CIA’s clandestine sources, our embassies all over the world, the National Security Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and every other federal agency with a possible input. Like crown jewels, too, they are protected to within an inch of their lives. In all my years in the CIA, I never once was given access to a PDB, and I was by far the rule, not the exception. Compartmentation rules forbid it. Sources and methods are too valuable.

The Aug. 6, 2001, PDB, in short, represents the very best intelligence we then had on Osama bin Ladin and his plans. So how good was it? In fact, pretty awful. The first item in the PDB refers the president to two interviews that Osama bin Ladin gave to American TV in 1997 and 1998. In the interviews, bin Ladin promises to "bring the fighting to America," following "the example of World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef." As it turns out, bin Ladin was telling the truth, but that’s not the point. In intelligence documents as in corporate reports and the evening news, the best stuff goes up top, and in this case the best was cribbed straight from the boob tube.
How about items two and three? The information in both relates to bin Ladin’s intention to attack the U.S., but it is from "liaison services"--i.e. foreign governments. We now know from leaks what those liaison services were, but we don’t know the provenance of the information. Was our friendly liaison reading it in the local paper? Was it fabricating, as happened with the Italians and the Niger yellow cake that was supposedly going to Saddam Hussein? The CIA rule used to be that you never ever trust liaison reporting unless you can confirm it with your own sources. Imagine The Wall Street Journal relying on Mad magazine for its investigative sourcing, and you’ll see just where such sloppy vetting can lead.
Not until three-quarters of the way through the PDB do we finally get to our own intelligence: a clandestine source who reported directly to a U.S. official that "a bin Ladin cell in New York was recruiting Muslim-American youth for attacks." Why bury this seemingly valuable nugget? Perhaps because our own source was dead wrong. Sept. 11 was planned and organized in Afghanistan and Germany. The 19 hijackers found their own way here and relied on their own funds. Support inside the U.S. came from unwitting contacts. No American Muslim was recruited to help the hijackers.
What’s in the PDB is damning enough, but to me, maybe the most alarming part is what’s not there. In the entire document--this crown jewel of intelligence--there isn’t a single mention of Saudi Arabia, the real Ground Zero of 9/11. Apparently, we had no idea suicide bombers were being recruited there or that cash was being raised for an attack on America.
Today, we’re told that things are better. The CIA is getting more money, better recruits, and more support from our allies, especially from Saudi Arabia. But I wonder. There still hasn’t been an indictment to come out of the Kingdom related to 9/11. Either Riyadh doesn’t know who recruited the 15 hijackers and paid for 9/11, or it doesn’t want to tell us. (You’ll notice the 9/11 Commission tiptoed around the subject of Saudi Arabia. That’s like investigating Lincoln’s assassination without dipping into the Civil War.)
In his testimony before the 9/11 Commission, CIA director George Tenet--the most candid of any of the witnesses, by the way--said we need five more years to catch up. I think he’s optimistic. It takes a generation to build an effective clandestine service. In the meantime, we have no choice but to rely on the Saudis to tell us whether we need to worry about all the killing going on in the Kingdom, whether it really has the petroleum reserves it claims to have, and a lot of other issues vital to our national security.
Personally, I would like to have my own source to tell me what’s happening inside the Kingdom’s fire-breathing mosques. That’s the only way we’re going to find out if more young Saudis are being recruited and money raised for another 9/11. Until then, we’re flying blind not just on Osama bin Ladin but on Islamic extremism throughout the Arab world and our own. That’s the opposite of intelligence.

Mr. Baer is a former CIA officer with the Directorate of Operations
Posted by: John || 04/30/2004 12:46:42 PM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  He knows what he is talking about.

Our "play nice" policies under the adminstation from 1992 to 2000 destroyed a lot of capacity for intelligence gathering. And worse, it destroyed the kind of ground-laying operatives that are imperative for re-establishment of effective operations in many sectors.

Relying on non-intrustive measures, third party, and lobbing cruise missles is no way to conduct operations. Except if you are risk averse, ignroant and do not like or trust the Armed Forces and Intelligence Services of the US.

And THAT was the biggest mistake of all that the CLintons made: they didnt liek or trust the military or intelligence. The former they used as a social experimentation group (integrated boot camps, ets) and abused as police (turning war fighters into peace keepers is the best way to destroy fighting capability), and the latter the hobbled with operational restrictions, crippled by encasing in vertical chains of command subdividing agencies further ("divide and conquer"), and withering away by chopping budget and legal authority for any in-situ operational personnel.

We are paying the price for the neglect and abuse of the Clinton years. Only instead of dollars, now we are paying the dues in the blood of US service members.
Posted by: OldSpook || 04/30/2004 13:10 Comments || Top||

#2  FYI:

Good intelligence is built on time, money and blood. The more of two that you have, the less you need of the remaining one. Reagan wisely put in money and time in large amounts. Bush I cut some of the money and time and traded off for blood in GWI (That and listened to state department weenies).

Clinton threw away the time (experience), and chopped the money, leaving us only blood to pay with. Which we have done starting with 9/11.

The current President is throwing money and blood into the mix, since he has no time left to spend (we threw it awy int he 1990's).

My only problem is that Rumsfeld and Congress are trying to still go cheap on the money: deploying less troops, not raising an additional active duty division, using Humvees instead of armor, etc, all of which add up to us having to to pay more in blood.
Posted by: OldSpook || 04/30/2004 13:15 Comments || Top||


Friday VDH day What the President Might Say
Posted by: Sherry || 04/30/2004 12:34 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Hmmmm. With nary a mention of Saudi complicity via Wahhabism and a characterization of Islam that belies its history I find myself at odds with this article. Surely, this might be a speech by the President, but I do not believe he would leave out any and all references, however vague. In fact, that is one of the things what Dubya has been doing that was utterly forbidden ever since the "special relationship" was hammered out between Roosevelt and Abdul Aziz. Perhaps VDH was being as literal as possible in the title / text relationship, but the missing ingredient makes this article less than "special", IMHO.
Posted by: .com || 04/30/2004 13:11 Comments || Top||

#2  .com:
VDH is a GWB kiss-ass and a warped snake-oil vendor. On Tuesday, Gallup released a poll of 3400 Iraqis, in which 71% reported that they view CPA troops as "occupiers." They hold those views because Powell-Bremer allow wholesale Wahabist-Khomenist propaganda in Iraq, while "faith based" Bushies outlaw secularism. GWB and his fanatic would be prophet - VDH - promote democratic "values" notwithstanding the fact that Wahabis and Khomenis treat democracy as an instrument of Mutjahid (cleric) tyranny. My hope is that a majority of Congress members will understand that GWB is a crook, whose "faith based" fanaticism has caused a waste of $150,000,000,000 on damaged-goods in Iraq. VDH is nothing but a spewer of tired rhetoric, that has no basis in objective reality.
Posted by: Man Bites Dog || 04/30/2004 20:51 Comments || Top||

#3  MBD - NMM Whore-alike? Wahabis and Khomeinists (by the way - that's how you spell it) do not ally - get your arguments straight
Posted by: Frank G || 04/30/2004 21:43 Comments || Top||


Transportation Department Fined Airlines Millions for Profiling Passengers
Excerpts from article by Ann Coulter
... Despite [Secretary of Transportation Norman] Mineta’s clearly worded letter immediately after the 9/11 terrorist attacks and another follow-up letter in October, the Department of Transportation found that in the weeks after the 9/11 terrorist attacks carried out by Middle Eastern men, the airlines were targeting passengers who appeared to be Middle Eastern. To his horror, Mineta discovered that the airlines were using logic and deductive reasoning to safeguard their passengers – in direct violation of his just-issued guidelines on racial profiling!

The Department of Transportation filed a complaint against United Airlines, claiming United removed passengers from flights in "a few instances" based on their race, color, national origin, religion or ancestry. Mineta gave United no credit for so scrupulously ignoring ethnicity on Sept. 11 that it lost four pilots, 12 flight attendants, and 84 passengers (not including the nine Arab hijackers). In November 2003, United settled the case for $1.5 million.

In another crucial anti-terrorism investigation undertaken by Norman Mineta, the Department of Transportation claimed that between Sept. 11, 2001, and Dec. 31, 2001, American Airlines – which lost four pilots, 13 flight attendants and 129 passengers (not including 10 Arab hijackers) on Sept. 11 by ignoring the ethnicity of its passengers – removed 10 individuals who appeared to be Middle Eastern from American Airline flights as alleged security risks. On March 1, 2004, American Airlines settled the case for $1.5 million.

The Department of Transportation also charged Continental Airlines with discriminating against passengers who appeared to be Arab, Middle Eastern or Muslim after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. In April 2004, Continental Airlines settled the complaint for $500,000.

Like many of you, I carefully reviewed the lawsuits against the airlines in order to determine which airlines had engaged in the most egregious discrimination, so I could fly only that airline. But oddly, rather than bragging about the charges, the airlines heatedly denied discriminating against Middle Eastern passengers. What a wasted marketing opportunity! Imagine the great slogans the airlines could use:

"Now Frisking All Arabs – Twice!"

"More Civil-Rights Lawsuits Brought by Arabs Than Any Other Airline!"

"The Friendly Skies – Unless You’re an Arab"

"You Are Now Free to Move About the Cabin – Not So Fast, Mohammed!"

Worst of all, the Department of Transportation ordered the settlement money to be spent on civil-rights programs to train airline staff to stop looking for terrorists, a practice known as digging your own grave and paying for the shovel. Airlines that have been the most vigilant against terrorism are forced by the government into re-education seminars to learn to suppress common sense. ....
Posted by: Mike Sylwester || 04/30/2004 9:05:14 AM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  This is going to have the opposite effect intended. If we feel that our government is STILL hampered in it's ability to screen out terrorists, it is just going to make the American population as a whole, more suspicious of Arabs.

While it may make it easier for non-terrorist Muslims to board planes without hassle, they are going to go down right along with us if a terrorist gets on board.

If it happens again, our Arab neighbors are going to find the pendulum quickly swinging much further than it has to date.
Posted by: B || 04/30/2004 9:52 Comments || Top||

#2  I am so, so glad I stopped flying as of 9/11/2001. By the way, whatever happened to arming the pilots & co-pilots? The DOT has pretty much stopped that Congress-mandated process dead in its tracks.
Posted by: Tresho || 04/30/2004 17:07 Comments || Top||


U.S.-Sponsored Arabic Stations Pay Off
EFL
The first ratings are in for Al Hurra the U.S. based Arabic language television station that just went on the air in February, and they look promising. Preliminary ratings, based on phone surveys in major Middle Eastern cities in the first part of April, show that an average of 20 percent of the homes contacted had tuned in to Al Hurra during the weeklong period.

Posted by: Dragon Fly (from a remote location) || 04/30/2004 6:45:59 AM || Comments || Link || [1 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Sounds good. We ought to be able to produce television content that is twice as entertaining, interesting, and addicting as Al-Jazeera. If we can get a substantial audience, we begin to level the playing field and inject a dose of sanity to staunch the flow of conspiracy-obsessed anti-americanism being spoon fed to the arabs continuously.
Posted by: sludj || 04/30/2004 12:45 Comments || Top||

#2  I am beginning to wish the US would sponsor a domestic news network featuring only news about the Muslim world, a la MEMRI & Daniel Pipes. The general populace certainly isn't getting much from the regular media nowadays.
Posted by: Tresho || 04/30/2004 17:08 Comments || Top||


FBI Renewed Investigations of Crop Dusters After Iraq War Began
Smaller airports have been under scrutiny by federal officials amid renewed concerns that terrorists may use crop dusters to carry out attacks. The FBI has questioned more than 3,000 pilots and aircraft owners, most of them in the past year, as agents probe fears that crop-dusting planes could be used to disperse biological or chemical weapons. Local experts and pilots believe the planes are secure. State officials estimate there are about 80 pilots licensed to apply pesticides in Idaho. ...

Colleen Hartnett, manager of the Nampa Airport, said she does believe private pilots locally are more security conscious than they once were -- but not because of terrorism. She said theft of planes, parts and fuel is a bigger concern. Security measures in place at the airport include a surveillance camera and locked gates surrounding the airfield. Airport tenants can open the gates using a code. Hartnett said one difference she has noticed since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks is that pilots are more generally wary of people wandering around the planes. ....

Most of the FBI’s crop-duster interviews were conducted after the March 2003 start of the war in Iraq, which triggered new concerns about terrorists acquiring and using weapons of mass destruction. The law enforcement official who described the initiative, known as the Agricultural Aviation Threat Project, told The Associated Press it was continuing. ....
Posted by: Mike Sylwester || 04/30/2004 8:14:04 AM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:


Asshat Semi-Apologizes For Tillman Column...
Man Admits Article Was "Insensitive"
Gee, ya THINK, Dickless?...
AMHERST, Mass. -- A University of Massachusetts at Amherst graduate student is apologizing to Pat Tillman's family.
He didn?t really, read on...
Rene Gonzalez had written a column for the campus paper saying the football player-turned-soldier who died in combat in Afghanistan wasn?t a hero -- but a "G.I. Joe guy who got what was coming to him."
Little piece of used condom didn?t have the balls to stand up and say it to anyone?s face..
Gonzalez said in an e-mail to a Boston TV station that he was trying to say Tillman's celebrity had factored into his being labeled a hero.
...No, you were trying to say that you had zero respect and honor for a man who had the guts to go after the people who want YOU dead...and you succeeded quite nicely.
Tillman's celebrity simply made his heroism more widely known.
He admits he tried to prove his point in an "insensitive way" ...
...Like Stalin was "insensitive"...
... and that the article wasn't worth publishing.
TRANSLATION: "But I'm a LLL post-grad - I CAN'T be wrong!!!
The school's president issued a statement calling Gonzalez's column "a disgusting, arrogant and intellectually immature attack" on Tillman.
I never thought I'd say THIS, but bravo for a college president..
The paper ran a letter to readers today saying the column didn't express the paper's views.
...That's putting it mildly...
The only way 'm going to accept any kind of apology from this weasel is when he stands up in front of a TV camera and then says his piece...but even then I'll know that he?s only saying it because he sees his future circling the drain.
Asshat.

Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski || 04/30/2004 12:15:20 AM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  On the other hand,Mr. Gonzalez looks to have a fine future as a New York Times writer.
Posted by: Stephen || 04/30/2004 1:01 Comments || Top||

#2  Gonzalez screwed up so badly even a MASSACHUSETSS college president sez he was wrong.

Whenever you get a college president froma super liberal state saying you were wrong, by God, you are wrong!
Posted by: badanov || 04/30/2004 1:28 Comments || Top||

#3  "and that the article wasn't worth publishing"

weak. It wasn't worth publishing - but it was worth writing...is that it?

I'd wish this brat ill will, but I've decided he's not worth the negative energy. I just feel so sorry for the Tillman family, having to endure such additional pain.
Posted by: B || 04/30/2004 3:39 Comments || Top||

#4  what's ironic is this asshat is only beginning to learn the meaning of got what was coming to him.
Posted by: PlanetDan || 04/30/2004 7:05 Comments || Top||

#5  He needs to do a real fess-up. This doesn't qualify. He's still an arrogant little pissant who's never known fear or want or anything else substantially negative - thanks to people like Pat Tillman. Prolly thinks he's being picked on, since Victimology 101 has been part of his CV.

He went medievel on someone whose shoes he was not fit to lick. In the same venal manner, perhaps we should put him in the stocks for a week in front of the Admin Bldg so he can come to understand and appreciate what has been handed to him on a silver platter. And it might, just might, give him a taste of the pain he dealt out so casually to the Tillman family.

There is no end to the consequences to a society when shame and retribution have been discarded as valid punishments for egregious offense.
Posted by: .com || 04/30/2004 8:51 Comments || Top||

#6  This is disappointing. If there's anything worse than an arrogant young Commie student of Bogus Studies who's consumed with penis envy, it's a spineless sniveling arrogant young Commie student of Bogus Studies who's consumed with penis envy.
Posted by: Angie Schultz || 04/30/2004 9:19 Comments || Top||

#7  I think he will suffer shame, and I think it will only intensify as he grows older. Oh sure, right now he's probably the little mini-celeb in his own circles, and the only regret he has right now is re: his saftey. But the long term burden of shame will be far more painful than any beating could ever be. The burden will just get heavier and harder to bear each year that goes by. And there is absolutely NOTHING he can do to remove it...it's a nonoperable cancer.

I'd feel sorry for him, but as PD said, he is going to learn the meaning of his own words "got what's coming to him".
Posted by: B || 04/30/2004 9:23 Comments || Top||

#8  Don't just dump a bunch of bile and hatred on ol' Snaggletooth here. Spread it around to his peers. The fact is, he felt comfortable writing and submitting this article. The entire depraved culture in which he is immersed needs an ass-beating.
Posted by: Cthulhu Akbar || 04/30/2004 10:18 Comments || Top||

#9  Yosemite Sam asked yesterday how to get the info on this spineless, dickless twerp to Hugh Hewitt and/or Sean Hannity -

hhewitt@hughhewitt.com, www.hughhewitt.com

www.hannity.com/contact, 800-941-7326

Sofia the Librarian
Posted by: Sofia || 04/30/2004 11:12 Comments || Top||

#10  If the article wasn't worth publishing, I have a suggested alternate use for his hard copy:

1) Start by folding it irregularly about 5 or six times so you get a lot of nice, sharp corners.

2) Shove it up Rene's rooty-poo candy ass.

Posted by: eLarson || 04/30/2004 11:46 Comments || Top||

#11  Cthulhu (nice handle), you are absolutely right. Didn't someone post something on Rantburg about this type of shit being discussed in Democratic Underground?

I dont think you have to go far to find a lot of little pissants like Rene of all shapes, sizes, and ages in the media, universities, etc....
Posted by: CrazyFool || 04/30/2004 12:25 Comments || Top||

#12  As a contrast, I'd like to share this article, which appeared in the teen-produced section of our local paper today.
Posted by: Cthulhu Akbar || 04/30/2004 12:31 Comments || Top||

#13  Thanks Sofia - I'm sending it from my "rantburg" email account now!!!
Posted by: Yosemite Sam || 04/30/2004 12:37 Comments || Top||

#14  FYI Sofia - the deed has been done! thanks for the contact info.
Posted by: Yosemite Sam || 04/30/2004 12:47 Comments || Top||

#15  Jonah Goldberg also heaped on the school paper for publishing this crap. Their apology was nonsense...all the 1st amendment BS and that they have to publish things that provoke, etc. Well this same paper would not publish David Horowitz's anti-slave reparations advertisements (not even editorial content). They only care about the 1st amendment when it protects speech that they implicitly or expllicitly support.
Posted by: remote man || 04/30/2004 13:00 Comments || Top||

#16  And in other news, another LLL columnist has a "Screw 'em" moment. Shrieking harpy Heather Mallick sez, "I pledge allegiance to my paycheque".
Posted by: Cthulhu Akbar || 04/30/2004 13:45 Comments || Top||

#17  Man, that Rene Gonzales dude is giving all puertorricans a bad name. As a born and raised p-rican, I despise him and his comments and I'm sure a lot of people in the island feel the same way. This I know, in my hometonw, Rene Gonzales will be the pendejo!! Pat Tillman wan an honorable man. Rene Gonzales will always be a creep and a jerk.
Posted by: Will || 04/30/2004 21:16 Comments || Top||

#18  The paper ran a letter to readers today saying the column didn't express the paper's views.

True, it was just the editorial staff that loved it. The guy who runs the copy down to the print shop didn't like it...
Posted by: Pappy || 04/30/2004 23:14 Comments || Top||

#19  The website of the college paper crashed after this uproar started & is still inaccessible.
Posted by: Tresho || 05/01/2004 1:19 Comments || Top||

#20  Rene Gonzalez is as entitled to his viewpoint as you are to yours. The First
Amendment protects ALL free speech; especially free political speech. I
don't like what Gonzalez said about Mr. Tillman either. But he should be
allowed to question people's motivation to "blindly" follow President Bush
and his military campaign in Iraq. He's allowed to guess the motivation of
Mr. Tillman to join the army and turn down an NFL contract and not come up
with the same answer that everyone else does. Vietnam taught Americans that
they have a right to question the government's activities and not just
blindly follow them. We are NOT one nation under one patriotic viewpoint.

Even hate speech is protected by the Supreme Court (R.A.V. vs City of St.
Paul 112 S .Ct. 2538). The Constitution protects all kinds of speech
because the framers realized the value of debate in a free society (however
offending that speech is to anyone). You are entitled to disagree with Mr.
Gonzalez and blast away back at him in an op-ed piece like you have. The
public can certainly trash Mr. Gonzalez all they want. But the UMass
President is not allowed to pressure Mr. Gonzalez into making an apology for
something he wrote, just because he happens to disagree with the viewpoint
and is in a position of power to do something about it. That is against the
law of the land.

I'm stunned to this day how many people in public life still don't
understand the First Amendment. I am going to do whatever I can to see that
Mr. Gonzalez is able to get an attorney to pursue his First Amendment rights
in this case because he will win.

The moment anyone has the right to singlehandedly silence dissent in a
society, that's when all the freedom the military is out there
defending, is all for naught. The real dishonor to Mr. Tillman's memory is
not Rene Gonzalez, its people like UMass President James Wilson.
Posted by: Anonymous4731 || 05/04/2004 23:41 Comments || Top||

#21  I'm stunned to this day how many people in public life still don't understand the First Amendment. I am going to do whatever I can to see that Mr. Gonzalez is able to get an attorney to pursue his First Amendment rights in this case because he will win.

I’m stunned that you are so ignorant about the First Amendment, and about lawsuits. Lawyers usually take on cases because they want to win -- this one would be a dead loser. There is no prior restraint by Government, or other First Amendment violation going on here. What you object to, is what you profess to admire, unfettered exercise of that First Amendment right known as expressions of contempt -- in this case directed toward some piece of moronic filth called Rene Gonzalez.
Posted by: cingold || 05/05/2004 0:06 Comments || Top||


International-UN-NGOs
Moslems Want International Law To Be Based on Sharia
World Muslim scholars meeting in Cairo urged incorporation of Sharia into the International Law to avoid eruption of more crises or other forms of injustice. .... Addressing the sixteenth session of the Conference, [Jaafar] Abdel-Salam, [Secretary General of the Islamic Universities Association] himself a professor of International Law, said the application of Sharia along with the International Law would help set up a world system "turning countries closer to each other".

"Islam, with its practices, is the best of international systems that could achieve peace," said Mohamed Dissouki, an International Law professor at Al-Azhar University, in the conference. .... Islam ... deeply respects vows, treaties and agreements and warns against the serious consequences of their violation, Dissouki averred. ....
Posted by: Mike Sylwester || 04/30/2004 11:40:51 PM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  1. THERE IS NO "INTERNATIONAL LAW."

2. World Muslim scholars can go fuck themselves. Sideways.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut || 05/01/2004 0:05 Comments || Top||

#2  This is a really bad thing. International Law as it stands today is one of the great triumphs of humanity, and one of the last bastions of the tender mercies of Natural Law. Displacing it with sharia based law is (to my humble legal mind) the equivalent of asking a physician to return to the tools of empiric surgeons of the eight century. International Law can be described as a set of legal rules governing relations between countries. The Internet Medieval Sourcebook, Medieval Legal History, has a good set of sources that deal with the topic. As noted in the introduction to one treatise(INTERNATIONAL LAW A SERIES OF LECTURES DELIVERED BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE 1887 BY HENRY SUMNER MAINE, K.C.S.I.), severely EFL:

In modern days the name of International Law has been very much confined to rules laid down by one particular class of writers. They may be roughly said to begin in the first half of the seventeenth century . . . It is further to be noted that before international law fell into the hands of these writers it had like most other subjects of thought attracted the attention of the Church. There is a whole chapter of the law of nations which is treated of by Roman Catholic theological writers, and a slight difference which distinguishes their use of technical expressions, such for example as 'law of nature' and 'natural law,' occasionally perplexes the student of the system before us. * * * Hence it came about that the great international jurists belonged to the smaller states and were wholly Protestants. . . . A law with a new sanction was required if states were to obey it, and this is what the new jurists produced. The effect was a rapid mitigation of wars and a rapid decrease in their frequency. * * * We may answer pretty confidently that its rapid advance to acceptance by civilised nations was a stage, though a very late stage, in the diffusion of Roman Law over Europe. * * * A great part, then, of International Law is Roman Law, spread over Europe by a process exceedingly like that which, a few centuries earlier, had caused other portions of Roman Law to filter into the interstices of every European legal system. The Roman element in International Law belonged, however, to one special province of the Roman system, that which the Romans themselves called Natural Law or, by an alternative name, Jus Gentium. * * * But though the founders of the system which lies at the basis of the rules now regulating the concerns of states inter se were not the first to describe the Law of Nature and the Law of Nations, Jus Nature, Jus Gentium, as the most admirable, the most dignified portion of Roman Law, they speak of it with a precision and a confidence which were altogether new. * * * It is sometimes difficult to be quite sure how Grotius and his successors distinguished rules of the Law of Nature from religious rules prescribed by inspired writers. But that they did draw a distinction is plain. Grotius's famous work, the 'De Jure Belli et Pacis,' is in great part composed of examples supplied by the language and conduct of heathen statesmen, generals, and sovereigns, whom he could not have supposed to know anything of inspired teaching. If we assume him to have believed that the most humane and virtuous of the acts and opinions which he quotes were prompted by an instinct derived from a happier state of the human race, when it was still more directly shaped and guided by Divine authority, we should probably have got as near his conception as possible. * * * To each successive inquirer, the actual childhood of the human race looks less and less like the picture which the jurists of the seventeenth century formed of it. It was excessively inhuman in war; and it was before all things enamoured of legal technicality in peace. But nevertheless the system founded on an imaginary reconstruction of it more and more calmed the fury of angry belligerency, and supplied a framework to which more advanced principles of humanity and convenience easily adjusted themselves.
Posted by: cingold || 05/01/2004 0:19 Comments || Top||

#3  Can we replace Newton's Law with Sharia while we're at it?
Posted by: Super Hose || 05/01/2004 0:32 Comments || Top||

#4  "Islam, with its practices, is the best of international systems that could achieve peace,"

And of course the whole world, when it thinks of Islam, straight away thinks of peace. Not violence, hatred, intolerance, ignorance, misogyny...
Posted by: Bulldog || 05/01/2004 5:15 Comments || Top||

#5  This is OT but I need your help. If any of you have any connections in the State Department or any news source, would you please find out if there was an attack on americans in Yanbu, Saudi Arabia today (5/01/04). I live in Dhahran and we will not know anything unless that saudi government wants us to know and I know this is something that they will rather keep quite.
Thanks in advance.
Posted by: Anonymous4617 || 05/01/2004 5:21 Comments || Top||

#6  Anonymous, looks as though there has been.

For breaking news, try Google News.

Here's a link to the current stories in the online media relating to (keyword) Yanbu:

http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&edition=us&ie=ascii&q=yanbu&btnG=Search+News
Posted by: Bulldog || 05/01/2004 6:29 Comments || Top||

#7  Bulldog,

Thank you, I just got it.
Posted by: Anonymous4617 || 05/01/2004 6:49 Comments || Top||

#8  Since 9/11, I've been trying to keep an open mind about Islam and this "religion of peace" business. I've been trying to reserve judgement on the questions of whether we can co-exist with Islam, and whether it can be reformed (e.g., through the institution of democratic governments) sufficiently that it does not pose an existential threat to the West.

I really have been trying to keep an open mind. But I'm on the verge of giving up.

In the last two and a half years I've seen no evidence-- absolutely none-- that tells me there's any reason to hope we can get along with these people, nor any evidence that Islam is anything other than what Daniel Pipes calls it: a totalitarian utopian ideology bent on world domination.

It's looking more and more like it's either them, or us.
Posted by: Dave D. || 05/01/2004 6:59 Comments || Top||

#9  Anonymous 4617 - I noticed that the capitalized "Western" several times. I wonder if those were workers who work for Western Geophysical?
Posted by: B || 05/01/2004 7:06 Comments || Top||

#10  A new Thursday night series for NBC -- "Sharia and Order."
Posted by: Infidel Bob || 05/01/2004 11:43 Comments || Top||

#11  Then, of course, there's the remake of one of my favorite old ABC series -- "Shariaman."
Posted by: Infidel Bob || 05/01/2004 11:45 Comments || Top||


Oil for terrorism?
As evidence of scandal mounts in the U.N. Oil for Food program, there are growing questions as to whether Saddam Hussein may have directed program revenues to terrorist organizations. What is known thus far is that Saddam had a lengthy record of support for terrorism, and that there has been no accounting for billions of dollars in revenues raised during the program’s seven years of operation. In testimony Wednesday before the House International Relations Committee, Claudia Rosett, a journalist and scholar who has carefully studied the program, said that more investigation is needed into how Oil for Food revenues were spent. She is absolutely right.
There is certainly ample reason to suspect that at least some of the money may have found its way to terrorist groups. Saddam’s financing of Palestinian suicide bombers is well-known, as is the fact that he harbored a rogue’s gallery of terrorists, including Abu Nidal and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, an al Qaeda-linked terrorist believed to be involved in the insurgent campaign to destroy Iraq’s transition to democracy. Documents found in Saddam’s Oil Ministry in Baghdad show that Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization, a longtime ally of Saddam, was profiting from Oil for Food money — funds meant to alleviate the suffering of the Iraqi people under international sanctions.

But, as Ms. Rosett indicated in her testimony, this may be just the tip of the iceberg. In June, the Forward, a national Jewish weekly, ran a story detailing the ties between an international banking network that has been linked by the Bush administration to al Qaeda and a Saudi oil firm linked with the deposed Taliban regime in Afghanistan.
Among Saddam’s oil customers after 1997 was a Liechenstein-based company called Galp International Trading Establishment. Galp chose as its legal representative in Liechenstein a company called Asat Trust — designated by the United States and the United Nations itself as a financier of al Qaeda through its ties with Al Taqwa — a multinational web of financial entities controlled by members of the Muslim Brotherhood (a parent organization of the terrorist group Hamas).
These and other aspects of the burgeoning Oil for Food scandal cry out for a serious investigation. But, unfortunately, the United Nations continues to stonewall. General Accounting Office investigators told the committee on Wednesday that U.N. officials had refused to release information from internal audits.
What’s needed now is a campaign to mobilize pressure on U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan — whose own performance is very much at issue here — to come clean and release the information. Unfortunately, the behavior of some committee Democrats, among them Reps. Tom Lantos, Howard Berman and Gary Ackerman, who suggested that hearings were part of a misguided effort to discredit the United Nations — may encourage the United Nations to continue its obduracy. That would be a disaster for Mr. Annan and the United Nations.
Posted by: Mark Espinola || 04/30/2004 2:44:22 AM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:


Southeast Asia
Shadowy group behind Thai violence
A top security adviser to the government said yesterday that an underground shadowy movement that has been building its ranks for almost a decade was behind the recent spate of violence in the country’s restive south. General Kitti Rattanchaya said the violence had little to do with the drug trade and was the work of a growing but shadowy movement that wanted a separate Islamic state. He said Islamic separatists had been building their ranks secretly by ’inciting people and training militias at religious schools’ in the south.

’They are now reaching the sixth of seven steps towards establishing an independent Muslim state,’ he said. ’The sixth stage is the armed fight and the undeclared war,’ he said, adding that the final stage was a revolution and the formation of an Islamic state. Gen Kitti did not name the movement, but some believe he may have been referring to one that goes by the name of Pusaka, pronounced as Pusa-koh. The Thai authorities first noticed it more than a year ago in documents found when they raided the home of a teacher, Ustadj Masae Usae, who is thought to be living underground in Malaysia. ’The military believes that is the name of the movement,’ a political science professor at Pattani’s Prince of Songkhla University, Prof Chidchanok Rahimullah, told The Straits Times. ’They say Masae Usae is the head of the movement. But personally, I don’t believe he has the charisma to inspire so many,’ said the professor, who met the teacher some years ago. The movement ’preys on young people who don’t have jobs, don’t have education, can’t get into universities and get into drugs’.
Posted by: Paul Moloney || 04/30/2004 6:44:31 PM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Sounds like the Democratic National Committee (USA) to me. The recrutment techniques are the same.
Posted by: CrazyFool || 04/30/2004 19:21 Comments || Top||


Ex-East Timor militia gang armed to teeth set to attack
A joint military and police force in East Nusa Tenggara (NTT) are keeping a watch on pro-Indonesia militiamen suspected of attempting to create chaos in neighboring East Timor.

The militia are hoarding thousands of firearms, grenades and ammunition in NTT territory bordering East Timor, the Indonesian Military (TNI) said on Friday.

"There is the intention on the part of militia to create chaos in Timor Leste (East Timor). They still have many guns buried in border areas," said Wirasakti 161 military commander Col. Moeswarno Moesanip overseeing security in NTT province.

He said soldiers and paramilitary Mobile Brigade police stationed in the border area were intensively monitoring the activities of around 20 militia leaders and members reported to be gathering there.

The men often smuggle Indonesian goods into East Timor, while studying security conditions in the newly born country, Moesanip said, quoting TNI intelligence officers.

It was not clear why the militiamen were not immediately arrested when it was discovered they were smuggling goods into East Timor.

Why nor Moesanip divulged the plans of the pro-Jakarta militia group to launch an attack on East Timor, instead of keeping them secret to search for their guns and arrest them was not clear.

It had widely been reported earlier that the TNI hired militiamen to help soldiers challenge independence fighters in East Timor during Indonesia’s occupation of the territory between 1970 and 1999.

The military-backed militia were blamed for the rampage that followed East Timor’s vote for independence in August 1999. Only a number of militia leaders were jailed for the mayhem, while senior TNI officers who were then responsible for security in the territory remained free.

However, Moesanip refuted claims that the TNI and police backed militia to destabilize East Timor, and vowed to shoot them on sight should they perpetrate new violence there.

The most effective measure to prevent militia attacks, according to him, would be to reopen the three traditional markets in the NTT-East Timor border area, which were closed after a shooting incident last year.

"The Timor Leste government should support the reopening of the three legal markets, so the activities of traders including militiamen can be controlled," Moesanip argued.

Otherwise, illegal markets would increase and security forces would be unable to curb militia activities at border areas, he added.

Moesanip said the East Timor authorities were worried about increasing militia operations at border areas ahead of the pullout of the United Nation Peacekeeping Force from the neighboring country, which is scheduled for early June.

With the planned UN withdrawal threats of militia attacks in East Timor have increased.
Posted by: TS (vice girl) || 04/30/2004 4:39:11 PM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:


Thai Muslim Soccer Team Turned Militant Overnight
BAAN SUSOE, Thailand (Reuters) - The shooting of an entire team of 19 soccer players from the same Muslim village in southern Thailand after they attacked a security checkpoint has left relatives stunned, mystified and outraged.
Yesterday, they were portrayed as poor innocent soccer playing schoolboys who got in the way.

Revelations about the soccer team give a disturbing insight into the minds if not the motives of those involved in Wednesday's violence, in which troops shot dead 108 machete and gun-toting militants after coming under attack. Three days after defending their annual county soccer title, the "All Stars" team of Baan Susoe village near the Malaysian border mounted nine motorcycles and rode 23 km (15 miles) through the night to launch a dawn attack on a security checkpoint.
Junior Motorcycles of Doom All Star team.

They planned to steal weapons from the soldiers, local people said, but armed only with machetes against the automatic rifles of Thai troops who had already been tipped off, they didn't stand a chance. Five members of the security forces were killed. One of the youths, who were all aged between 19 and 26, managed to strike a soldier with his blade. The rest were all shot dead before they even got close.
That's what happens when you bring a knife to a gunfight.

Relatives of one of the dead, 20-year-old Kamaruding Baeprommi, told Reuters he had had the potential to become a soccer superstar for Thailand's national team.
"Had" being the operative word.

"He started playing soccer when he was eight and was very good," said Pitaya Baeprommi, Kamaruding's elder brother and head of the village sports club.
"He had the potential to become a national superstar so I encouraged him to go into the army and play soccer. He represented his barracks in an army regional tournament," Pitaya said.
So he was in the Thai army?

There was no sign that his younger brother, whose 21-year-old wife Koriya Samae was three months pregnant with their first child, would have committed a crime until the eve of the attack, Pitaya said. "On that night he came home from his wife's with a suitcase and told his mother that he would go on a Dahwah," Pitaya said, referring to an Islamic religious mission.
Friends don't let friends do islam

Government officials said tests had shown four of the "All Stars" used a heady mixture of methamphetamine and marijuana before launching the motorcycle raid.
Dope up the kids and point them into the guns.

"We also found prayer beads and five commandments written in the Malay dialect, Yawi, in their backpacks," local district official Suvej Taepee, told Reuters.
Four of the 19 men had also been teachers at an Islamic primary school in the village, he said.
Tap, tap, didn't twitch.

Residents acknowledged the "All Stars" might well have smoked marijuana, a habit common throughout the impoverished area, but they described their friends as "local heroes," as dedicated to Islam as they were to soccer.
Funny, I thought dedicated muslims didn't do drugs?

"This is excessively brutal," said Sutha Lohpanasa, 35, a teacher at a school in a nearby village whose 19-year-old nephew was also among the dead. "Every single one of them had bullets in their heads. The officers knew nothing about human rights. They were all sharp-shooters," he said.
My compliments to the Thai Army.

"My nephew and many of his friends were good lads. His daily life was going to school, praying, and practicing soccer. We knew nothing of his bad behavior."
They never do, do they?
Posted by: Steve || 04/30/2004 12:35:18 PM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  "Five members of the security forces were killed. One of the youths, who were all aged between 19 and 26, managed to strike a soldier with his blade. The rest were all shot dead before they even got close."
One managed to get a blow in, all the rest were shot dead and yet five members of the security force are dead? Either the troops got caught in their own crossfire or it sounds as though the attackers were more effective than is being acknowledged.
Posted by: Seger || 04/30/2004 12:58 Comments || Top||

#2  I think the writer got his lines crossed, and meant that in the course of the day, five members of the security force were killed, not that they were killed in this particular incident. This was one incident on a fairly bloody day.
Posted by: Mitch H. || 04/30/2004 13:07 Comments || Top||

#3  If the authors and agenda-jerks responsible for this pseudo-article, made oh-so-obvious by the quotes they chose to include, are gonna do their usual apology BS, then I won't take it seriously either. In that vein...

I'm not terribly knowledgeable regards soccer / football of this stripe, but isn't it unusual to red-card the whole team at once?
Posted by: .com || 04/30/2004 13:29 Comments || Top||

#4  "My nephew and many of his friends were good lads. His daily life was going to school, praying, and practicing soccer. We knew nothing of his bad behavior."

I can accept the shool part as long as he was learning something useful. But a much more laudable expression of his time would be to either find a frigging job or do what ever you have to do to be productive to your family. Someone isn't handing out martyr bonuses in Thialand are they?
Posted by: cheaderhead || 04/30/2004 13:48 Comments || Top||

#5  Thailand is a great country. Now we find out that there is a Muslim section. Strangely enough, the Muslim section is getting more and more violent. Anyone who thinks this fight is not going to get a lot bigger and nastier is living in a dreamworld. The Muslims continue to foment violence all over the world. Pretty soon, they are going to get more than they bargained for.
Posted by: remote man || 04/30/2004 14:12 Comments || Top||

#6 
Funny, I thought dedicated muslims didn't do drugs?


Re-read the history of the assassins. They smoked hashish to get their Allah-anger up before they went out to kill.

The Junior Cyclists of Doom did the same.

Nice to know Islam keeps its best traditions alive.

(Someone needs to explain to Thai Muslims that while "sidehacking" does involve motorcycles, it doesn't involve machetes.)
Posted by: Robert Crawford || 04/30/2004 14:15 Comments || Top||

#7  Oooh, good new word, "dahwah".

Kind of like "quest", but for brainwashed islamic nutcases instead.
Posted by: Carl in N.H || 04/30/2004 14:32 Comments || Top||

#8  kinda like "road trip!" but without the return home
Posted by: Frank G || 04/30/2004 14:37 Comments || Top||

#9  "This is excessively brutal,"

yes it is - for that many people to go a rampage with the intent of stealing weapons and using machetes....what would you expect..the police to sit back let them take the weapons and then begin the gunfight??please what a dumbass
Posted by: Dan || 04/30/2004 18:47 Comments || Top||

#10  Woah, Dude! That must have been some seriously good s**t they were smoking. I've -er- experimented -hem- with such in the past, and I NEVER got the urge to kill people with machetes - even if they were carrying Ring-Dings.
Posted by: Xbalanke || 04/30/2004 19:05 Comments || Top||

#11  I suggest they be given a Team Darwin Award.
Posted by: whitecollar redneck || 04/30/2004 21:54 Comments || Top||


Indonesia's Abu Bakar re-arrested
Bloody riots broke out outside the prison where Indonesian cleric Abu Bakar Bashir was re-arrested moments after he stepped free from jail, having served a sentence for immigration offences.
"How you doing, Abu? Long time no see, put these cuffs on."
Hundreds of his supporters clashed with police and scores were injured. The 65-year-old preacher was re-arrested under an anti-terror law, and police say he will be charged with the Bali bombings and other terror attacks.
About time.
It was a destructive dawn.
Not a dark and stormy night?
As police ejected Abu Bakar's hardcore followers and students from the prison gates early Friday, more than tempers flared.
Seething and ranting from one and all
Slabs of stone and firebombs flew.
No shots?
Shots rang out.
Somewhere a woman screamed!
When the police first arrested Abu Bakar in his hometown in Solo, Central Java, in November 2002, scenes like these also broke out. Then, police had to yank Abu Bakar from his hospital bed which his supporters had surrounded. Abu Bakar had claimed ill-health at the time.
Got his health back in the joint, pity.
Coming back to Friday morning, the battle-hardened teacher-turned-terrorist suspect emerged from prison smiling.
"Free at last, free at last, thank Allah I'm free at last!"
But hours later, the cleric was taken to the police headquarters where he was detained and interrogated over his alleged leadership of the Jemaah Islamiyah terror network, the group blamed for the Bali bombings which killed just over 200 people.
Expect illness to break out anytime now.
Speaking to Channel NewsAsia, the cleric said he'll be "rock steady" while in police detention. "I'm prepared to speak in court. I'm ready. Bring in the evidence from all over the world. I'm ready to face them," he said.
"All da witnesses are dead"
Under Indonesia's new anti-terrorism laws, Abu Bakar can be detained at the police headquarters for up to 6 months before fresh terror charges can again be filed against him.
Handy being a quasi-police state.
M Assegaf, Abu Bakar's lawyer, said: "The police claim (terrorist suspects) Omar Al Farouq and Hambali will be witnesses. That's nonsense. Their evidence will be nullified in court and the cleric will be freed."
"Even if he doesn't, I still get paid, right?"
Posted by: Steve || 04/30/2004 11:47:45 AM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  double win! Bakar's back in the pokey and his asshat followers got their heads cracked! I'm feeling pretty good after that...
Posted by: Frank G || 04/30/2004 12:08 Comments || Top||

#2  Earth to Mullah Krekar:

You thought your life was s*** when that {gulp} girl, Shabina Rehman, gave you a lift?

(See: Rantburg Post "Comedian Outrages High-Profile Mullah")

Look and learn from the "lamentable" tale of Abu {He ain't Aladdin's monkey} Bakar Bashir
Posted by: BigEd || 04/30/2004 12:16 Comments || Top||


Separatists 'led Thai attacks'
Muslims in southern Thailand have held tense Friday prayers, amid mounting evidence Islamic militants were behind this week's bloody clashes. Thailand's prime minister insisted the attacks were carried out by criminals.
Thailand's government is still in deniel.

But a senior government security adviser and a man arrested after the fighting both said the attacks were the work of Islamic separatists. Security forces killed 108 people in the attacks in the Muslim south. Three police and two soldiers also died. Groups of young men launched apparently co-ordinated assaults on security posts throughout Yala, Pattani and Songkhla provinces on Wednesday. A senior security adviser, Gen Kitti Rattanchaya, told the AP news agency that the attackers had been trained in Thailand and overseas and were ready to sacrifice themselves.
An arrested suspect, Mama Matiyoh, who police said took part in an attack in Yala, said he and his colleagues were willing to die for Allah, police told the Thai newspaper, the Bangkok Post. Mama Matiyoh said they took part in the uprising because they wanted to declare an Islamic state - comprising Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat provinces.
For a start

Police said he was the leader of a group who wore green shirts with slogans such as "There are no other gods but Allah". He was believed to be a member of the Barisan Revolusi Nasional separatist movement, the newspaper said.
Troops in the south remained on high alert after two extra battalions of soldiers were sent to step up security. A senior general said the army could face thousands more insurgents. A statement purporting to be from the local separatist group Pulo (Patani United Liberation Organisation) urged the Malay people in southern Thailand and Muslims throughout the country to follow Islamic teachings. The statement, which appeared on Pulo's website on Friday, warned Muslims not to go to venues such as bars, nightclubs and concerts, asking them instead to stay at home or in mosques.
"If you follow this instruction you will live in happiness," the statement said.
"If you don't, you'll be considered a target."

Several governments have warned their nationals not to travel to the southern provinces. New York-based Human Rights Watch said on Thursday that Thailand should launch an investigation into whether "such a high level of lethal force was necessary".
Yes
Posted by: Steve || 04/30/2004 9:19:04 AM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Separatists, criminals, what's the difference?
Posted by: Tresho || 04/30/2004 17:18 Comments || Top||


Embattled Christians in Indonesia Fear Return of Jihad Fighters
Pacific Rim Bureau (CNSNews.com) - Christians in Indonesia’s Maluku province and Christian campaigners abroad have reacted with alarm to reports that a disbanded Islamist militia may re-form and deploy to the troubled region amid a new outbreak of violence there.

As was the case during the earlier carnage, various players are again disputing the reasons for the renewed violence, and where the blame lies. The latest trouble began on Sunday, a day marked by members of a small, mostly Christian organization as the anniversary of a short-lived separatist state in the 1950s. Local Muslims angered by the display of separatist flags - and by the sight of policemen providing security to the Maluku Sovereignty Front (FKM) supporters - reportedly began to make faces, roll their eyes, seethe and throw stones.

The situation deteriorated and police opened fire, according to local media and witness accounts. Several buildings, including a church and a U.N. office, were damaged by fire.
Strangely, the local mosque suffered no damage.
The following days saw sporadic incidents of violence, including shootings and the torching of homes. After police reinforcements were sent in, two policemen were shot dead by sniper fire.

Christians and Muslims living near the border between the divided communities have fled their homes, with some taking shelter respectively in a church and a mosque. The U.N. has bravely run away evacuated staff from the area.

Some Christians and some Muslims alike have accused the police of taking sides with the other community. Christians have disputed the notion -- cited by some government officials -- that the violence is between FKM supporters and nationalists who were fighting to protect the "undivided republic" against separatism. Cornelius Bohm, a Catholic priest attached to a diocesan crisis center in Ambon, said the FKM adherents were a small group of several hundred unarmed people, while the attackers could also not be identified as the broader Muslim community. A limited number of Muslims were using the opportunity to cause havoc, and those who were being attacked included Christians who repudiate the FKM’s campaign, he said.

In turn, some Christians also "degrade themselves" and join in the violence. Bohm said Christians had been seen going in numbers to Ambon police headquarters, singing national songs to prove their allegiance to the state -- and by implication their opposition to the FKM separatism. "They vehemently declared that Christians are not second-class citizens and have the fundamental right to be protected against terrorists and criminals."

Of deep concern to Christians are reports that the notorious Laskar Jihad, a Java-based militia heavily involved in the 1999-2002 violence and reported to have been disbanded in late 2002, may be revived and return to Maluku. The group’s head, Jafar Umar Thalib, was quoted by the Indonesian news agency Antara Tuesday as saying he was monitoring the situation and was ready to send thousands of fighters to Ambon to kill infidels defend the integrity of the unitary state of Indonesia, if security forces were unable to end the violence.

Although the 1999-2002 conflict was sparked by a local dispute and involved casualties on both sides as local militia groups clashed, a qualitative change was reported after Laskar Jihad fighters arrived in the province, ostensibly to support Muslims against Christian-instigated violence.
Qualitative change = major mayhem.
A peace accord was eventually negotiated in 2002, and later that year, Jafar announced he was disbanding the militia. Thousands of fighters left Maluku and another violence-torn province, Sulawesi.
"What? We left some infidels behind? Rats. Lemme git mah sword and mah AK!"
Posted by: Mark Espinola || 04/30/2004 12:46:33 AM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Direct contacts that I made with local Indonesian Christians, informs me that JI militants are pouring into Christian majority areas. They already have sufficient numbers to conduct intimidation and terror, with near absolute impunity. As the Wahabis are pouring billions into the West, to subvert the Free World, their accomplices in Islamania are ethnically cleansing Hindus, Buddhists, Christians and Seculars. This has to stop, and let it stop by ending the Bush government's insane alliance with Iran-puppet clerics (mutjahids) in Iraq.
http://www.manilatimes.net/national/2004/apr/30/yehey/world/20040430wor5.html
Posted by: Man Bites Dog || 04/30/2004 1:23 Comments || Top||

#2  Jihadism in Thailand is hot and getting hotter. Anybody know of any other local sources, other than the two that I post here?

http://www.jeffooi.com/

http://www.nationmultimedia.com/

http://www.nationmultimedia.com/page.news.php3?clid=2&theme=A&usrsess=1&id=112835
Posted by: Man Bites Dog || 04/30/2004 2:17 Comments || Top||

#3  This is exactly why decent citizens should be armed. In this case, to the teeth.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut || 04/30/2004 2:39 Comments || Top||

#4  Dog, your comments should wake up people world-wide to the well organized threats poised by al-Qa'ida and it's agents of jihadic terror. It is a shame so many people in the free world seem to have blinders on concerning the dangers we are being confronted with this very hour. The only item you mentioned which I do not understand is your comment reguarding "the Bush government's insane alliance with Iran-puppet clerics (mutjahids) in Iraq". It firmly believe our Coalition troops are doing the very best they can in the battle field considering the Iranian back jihadists which are instigating the chaos and death throughout some areas of Iraq in the south. If you look at your greater Middle-Eastern map it should be rather clear that the Bush White House has strategically surrounded Iran on the Afghan and Iraqi borders, not to mention our navy and the Brits control the Persian Gulf. If Bush were to issue statements about taking on the two main Shi'ite promoters of terrorism currently going on in Iraq, which are the rouge states of Iran & Syria, the left-wing Kerry crowd would make political hay out taking the required steps to counter these fanatical terrorist nations. Yes, Saudi Arabia must have a massive alteration of whom is running the show, but this is a pre-election period. Wait until Bush is re-elected for the second term and the enemy behind the enemy shall pay. If for some insane reasons after the election, the present Saudi Wahabi dictatorship is allowed to carry on as normal with their OPEC billions for jihad....we shall all pay in more ways the one!
Posted by: Mark Espinola || 04/30/2004 3:01 Comments || Top||

#5  Mark, poster of dire economic news, Man Bite Dog always posts like that.
Posted by: B || 04/30/2004 3:51 Comments || Top||

#6  what does your sister Jessika think about it?
Posted by: B || 04/30/2004 3:52 Comments || Top||

#7  Thai jihad brewing: Link
Posted by: Man Bites Dog || 04/30/2004 4:02 Comments || Top||

#8  Bush as strategic genius? Hmmm...could anyone who hires an Erma Bombeck impersonator like Karen Hughes as a senior advisor, and who claims to take counsel from the "Holy Ghost," have all his screws fixed tight?
Posted by: Man Bites Dog || 04/30/2004 4:37 Comments || Top||

#9  Right you are,Barbara.
Posted by: raptor || 04/30/2004 9:04 Comments || Top||

#10  But...but...but... I didn't hear anything about this on the news? How can this be happening?

We need to realize that the WOT is not a local 'iraq/Afghanistan' conflict or 'police action' but a world war. While the 9/11 comissioners are short-stroking each other to a national audience and people are most concerned with 'American Idiot' people are being murdered.
Posted by: CrazyFool || 04/30/2004 9:47 Comments || Top||


Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Ayatollah Says Iran Has No Political Prisoners Because No Law Mentions Them
Judiciary Chief Ayatollah Mahmud Hashemi-Shahrudi said in Tehran on 29 April that "we have no political prisoners in Iran" because Iranian law does not mention such offenses.... His statement contradicts President Hojatoleslam Mohammad Khatami’s earlier admission that dissidents have been jailed. "The world may consider certain cases, by their nature, political crimes, but because we do not have a law in this regard, these are considered ordinary offenses."
Posted by: Mike Sylwester || 04/30/2004 11:33:18 PM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  I think he would have been better off going with a different standard arguement:
"If we do have political prisoners, I don't know about them because I was out of the room, having had too much Turkish coffee at that meeting of the Revolutionary Council."
Posted by: Super Hose || 05/01/2004 0:29 Comments || Top||

#2  I bet military plans are adready in the works to topple Iran's mad mullahs by the end of the year. Reason: Iran, utilizing her billions in exported crude oil is bankrolling terrorism in Iraq, against Israel, controls Lebanon through Hizb'allah and keeps Syria's Assad in power to export further terrorism.
Posted by: Mark Espinola || 05/01/2004 3:26 Comments || Top||


Excerpts from a Current Iranian TV Series Explaining How Jews Control Hollywood
The plot of the film Funny Girl served to introduce the ugly Jewish actress Barbra Streisand, who played the role of Fanny Brice. Films portraying a positive image of the Jews appeared in early 1980’s. Among those were the third version of The Jazz Singer, The Shout from 1981 directed by Valentino, and the film Tootsie, in 1982, directed by Sydney Pollack. The movie Yentl which Barbra Streisand starred in and produced in 1983, dealt with the Zionists’ wish to benefit from feminism, the new women’s movement, as time goes by.

Awarding Driving Miss Daisy the Oscar for best picture in 1989 strengthened this conservative Jewish trend. The film Driving Miss Daisy tells of an old Jewish woman and her black driver. In the beginning, the old woman hates the driver, but in the end she establishes a friendly relationship with him. ....

Their other position relates to science fiction. They always create imaginary threats to Earth on which we safely live. They speak of alien creatures, occurrences in outer space, and metaphysical catastrophe that will happen and affect our lives. Hollywood cinema, and to a great extent the Jewish companies in Hollywood, are trying very hard, using extraterrestrial threats, to portray a certain image of stability in the world. In Independence Day the first catastrophe occurs in Iraq. Meaning, this force struck the first blow on an Arab Muslim country. Now, America, as a representative of the planet, is required to do something against this threat from outer space. This is how they dictate to the viewer that America is the savior and that it is the only one who needs to save everyone and the others are unimportant.

The Matrix was a meeting point between Hollywood and Jewish Zionist fundamentalism. In using The Matrix, the Wachowski brothers tried to embellish the ugly image of the State of Israel and to introduce the Zionist society as a utopian future society. The plot for The Matrix is derived from the teachings of Gush Emunim, or the fundamental Zionists. The agents’ purpose in The Matrix is to arrest the resistance leader, Morpheus, in order to eliminate the Zionist resistance movement by obtaining the entrance code to its network. In the film The Matrix, Zion is regarded as the only sanctuary and as the center of human resistance in the third millennium. The film indirectly suggests to the viewers that all other beliefs and ideologies are null and void. This is the Zionist racism, which wants everything for itself and does not conceive of non-Jews as deserving to live and prosper. This is only a miniscule part of the proof of the political, religious, and biblical aspects of The Matrix. .....

This is because it saw this perception as in total compliance with Tne Protocols of the Elders of Zion and as a guarantee of the Zionist victory. With time, this perception created new sources of fear: beginning with Arabian Bedouin tribes and ending with alien creatures coming from outer space and always landing in American cities. Each time, their death was described in a more fanciful and gleeful way in accordance with the first and ninth protocols ....

"The Arabs are portrayed in Lawrence of Arabia as inept, stupid, and illogical facing technology and new inventions. This ploy fits the content of the fourteenth protocol .... In the film Lawrence of Arabia, an emphasis is put on one of the Zionist goals written in the first of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and that is the role the Zionists and their agents play in sparking riots or revolutions under the slogan of liberty around the world. In this film, Lawrence was sent to the Arabs for that purpose....

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion were divided into 24 parts and included the satanic Jewish ideas of taking over the world using a Jewish government, after destroying all of Orthodox Russia, Catholic Europe, the pope’s reign, and Islam.
Posted by: Mike Sylwester || 04/30/2004 11:19:53 PM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  I didn't know "Anti"war writes movie reviews too.
Posted by: BMN || 04/30/2004 23:28 Comments || Top||

#2  "The Arabs are portrayed in Lawrence of Arabia as inept, stupid, and illogical facing technology and new inventions."

Uh. Well . . .

And the point is proved by these Moslem's inability to even understand the plot in The Matrix:

"The agents’ purpose in The Matrix is to arrest the resistance leader, Morpheus, in order to eliminate the Zionist resistance movement by obtaining the entrance code to its network. "

The "Zionist" resistance movement. Silly, silly, silly . . .

And if that's not enough:

"Their other position relates to science fiction. They always create imaginary threats to Earth on which we safely live. They speak of alien creatures, occurrences in outer space, and metaphysical catastrophe that will happen and affect our lives. Hollywood cinema, and to a great extent the Jewish companies in Hollywood, are trying very hard, using extraterrestrial threats, to portray a certain image of stability in the world."

Using extraterrestrial threats?

Wow. Are these pantiwaists guys are easy to scare or what?

Pathetic. Just pathetic. . . . pass the popcorn!
Posted by: ex-lib || 05/01/2004 2:45 Comments || Top||


Tehran Court Fines USA $600 Million for Supporting Iraq’s Chemical Warfare
Lessee, 52 Americans held over a year, damages for illegal confinement, damage to the embassy, failure to keep the dust down in the desert where the chopper went down, hmmm, carry the 4, times 3 toes, square root of 31, ...

Nope, they still owe us. Big.
A Tehran court fined the United States $600 million for encouraging Iraq in its 1980-88 war with Iran and "supplying the Ba’athist regime...with chemical bombs and facilitating their use against...defenseless [Iranians]," ISNA reported on 28 April. Branch Three of the Tehran judiciary ordered the fine to be paid to a group of veterans harmed by chemical attacks in that war, ISNA stated, adding that the court has already fined the U.S. government $1.8 billion for similar charges. The ruling was sent to the Swiss Embassy in Tehran, which handles U.S. interests in the absence of Iranian-U.S. ties.
$600 million for our involvement? Wonder what the Soviets, French and Chinese will have to cough up?
Posted by: Mike Sylwester || 04/30/2004 12:01:11 AM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Jimmy Carter was president when it started. Let him pay some of the fine with that Nobel "Peace" Prize money.
Posted by: BigEd || 04/30/2004 0:07 Comments || Top||

#2  I've got a message for the Swiss to take back to Iran: FOAD.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut || 04/30/2004 0:21 Comments || Top||

#3  How much will they fine Lula's Brazil for selling a billion dollars worth of proven and acknowledged weapons to Iraq during that war?

Posted by: Atomic Conspiracy || 04/30/2004 1:13 Comments || Top||

#4  We'll send the 1st Armored Division over right away with the check! I assume you all will still be in Tehran to meet them?
Posted by: Chris Smith || 04/30/2004 3:08 Comments || Top||

#5  Don't they know how many Monopoly games we are going to have to buy to attain the type of payola?
Posted by: Super Hose || 04/30/2004 3:36 Comments || Top||

#6  Actually, buy a Powerball ticket and have Bolton deliver it to their UN Ambassador during one of the sessions.
Posted by: Super Hose || 04/30/2004 3:37 Comments || Top||

#7  Mullahs are feeling very strong right now, huh.
Posted by: Just try and dhimmi me! || 04/30/2004 9:32 Comments || Top||

#8  How do you say "Try and collect" in Farsi?
Posted by: mojo || 04/30/2004 11:24 Comments || Top||

#9  Won't someone rid me of these meddlesome priests?
Posted by: Ruprecht || 04/30/2004 16:14 Comments || Top||

#10  Soon, Ruprecht, soon.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut || 04/30/2004 17:56 Comments || Top||


Mullahs Respond to Torture Accusations by Issuing a Directive
Kianoosh Sanjari is an Iranian student activist who has been arrested and incarcerated several times in the last several years. Sanjari told RFE/RL he was subjected to psychological torture while incarcerated. "For a youngster like me who was arrested at the age of 17 and put into prison, solitary confinement for several months was probably the worst psychological torture, and many [who were subjected to the same treatment] wished to die," he said. ....

Sanjari said many of those arrested during the 1999 student unrest were beaten. "I was a witness to the beatings in jail," he said. "Many of the students who were arrested in the aftermath of the student unrest in 1999 were lashed on their feet. For example, [well-known activist] Ahmad Batebi’s head was held in a toilet. Consequently, many of the students are suffering even today from numerous infections."

Yesterday, the head of Iran’s hard-line judiciary ordered a ban on the use of torture. In a 15-point directive to police, intelligence, and judicial officials, the head of Iran’s judiciary, Ayatollah Mahmud Hashemi-Shahrudi, said, "Any torture to extract confessions is banned, and the confessions extracted through torture are not legitimate and legal." The directive says that police should avoid blindfolding, restraining, or harassing detainees. Those accused of crimes also should have access to a lawyer.

Mohammad Hossein Aghassi, a lawyer based in Tehran, told Radio Farda correspondent Siavash Ardalan that the directive is a tacit admission that torture exists in Iran’s prisons. "The issuing of this directive indicates that such events happen throughout the country. Before it was said that torture did not exist, the constitution had banned it, and Islamic law is also opposed to it. And now the details we see in the directive are exactly issues that critics have been pointing out. On the other side, [the authorities] have always denied [the allegations about torture]. They closed many of the publications and newspapers because they had said, ’Yes, there is torture [in Iran]," Aghassi said. ....

Vice President Mohammad Ali Abtahi was quoted by Iranian newspapers as saying the directive should be welcomed "if, in the future, it is observed in Iran’s judicial system and prisons."

But rights activists in Iran believe there is little hope that the order will actually stop the use of torture. "The existing laws are a better deterrent against the use of torture and maltreatment [of prisoners] than a simple directive. People who commit such acts do so secretly, and prisoners will not be released until such time that the signs of the beatings and harassment fade away. I think the directive serves more a propaganda purpose than a functional one," Aghassi said.

Student activist Sanjari also expresses doubt that the judiciary’s directive will be implemented in all of the Islamic Republic’s prisons. "[The authorities] have numerous prisons which are not under the control of the prison [authorities]. For example, I was held in solitary confinement for three months in 2001 in the Revolutionary Guard’s Prison 59," he said. "Torture was used there, but the officials from the prison organization did not respond [about my whereabouts] to my family. Until all jails are under the control of the prison organization, we will not witness the real implementation of the judiciary’s directive." ....
Posted by: Mike Sylwester || 04/30/2004 12:00:00 AM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1 
Mullahs Respond to Torture Accusations by Issuing a Directive
For what? On how to do it better?
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut || 04/30/2004 0:18 Comments || Top||

#2  reading the kkkoran is torture!!
Posted by: SON OF TOLUI || 04/30/2004 1:15 Comments || Top||


Terror Networks
2003 "Patterns of Global Terrorism" Report
Posted by: Paul Moloney || 04/30/2004 04:22 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:


U.S. Issues Worldwide Alert Citing Increased Terrorism Threat
April 29th, 2004 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. issued a new worldwide alert for its citizens, citing an increased threat of terrorist attacks against U.S, interests. ``The Department of State is deeply concerned about the heightened threat of terrorist attacks against U.S. citizens and interests abroad,’’ the Department said in an e-mailed statement. There are indications the al-Qaeda network ``continues to prepare to strike U.S. interests abroad.’’

The alert supercedes a worldwide caution issued in March, the State Department said. Terrorist actions may include suicide operations, hijackings and attacks against aviation and maritime targets, the statement said.

An audiotape, purportedly from al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, broadcast earlier this month offered ``reconciliation’’ with European nations provided they stay out of Muslim affairs. The speaker said the U.S. and Israel remained targets. The tape was aired by the al-Arabiya television network.

The State Department earlier this week issued a travel alert for Israel and the Gaza Strip, citing threats by Hamas to attack U.S. interests after Israel’s killing of two leaders, Abdel Aziz Rantisi and Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the founder of the group.
Posted by: Mark Espinola || 04/30/2004 1:01:27 AM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  We seem to be moving towards a world divided between states who can (or make strenuous endeavours to) secure themselves against terrorism and those that dont/cant. The fact the secure states invent, make and feed people will make things difficult for those on the other side. All we have to do is fix the energy supply problem.
Posted by: Phil B || 04/30/2004 1:28 Comments || Top||

#2  Well, we had a terror threat here in LA. The Jihadi were supposed to go after a mall today. A mall near to the Federal Building in West Los Angeles (Fed Building is 1/2 mile from UCLA).

At 10:30PM on 4/29 all is still quiet.
Most shops are closed.

Not high enough kill number to get the 72 virgins.
Posted by: BigEd || 04/30/2004 1:41 Comments || Top||

#3  The Coalition nations of the willing serving in Iraq must face up to the facts. The adverse situation in Iraq is being triggered by Iran & Syria, plus jihadists agents from al-Qa'ida supported by Saudi Arabia. Ask yourselves what is the main source of financial assistance Iran is able to utilize to spread their Shi'ite version of jihad to Iraq, Afghanistan, to rats such as Hamas & Hizballah? Iranian OPEC oil is that source of funding, just as Saddam's exported OPEC oil was his the tool of terror against Israel, war with Iran and his invasion of Kuwait. Cut the source off and reduce the enemy's capabilities to wage jihad. Sooner or later, as with Nazi Germany & Japan, American and her true allies will for forced to confront the enemies of freedom.
Posted by: Mark Espinola || 04/30/2004 3:34 Comments || Top||

#4  Mark, I think we already realize this. And by we, I mean most of the population, as well as the administration. But, we have a fifth column here in this country who want to see us fail, to lose in Iraq and elsewhere. They are pinning their hopes on a Kerry victory. And until after the elections in November, while this contest is in doubt, the others are going to have to wait.

I know it sucks, but these modern Democrats do not believe politics stop at the water's edge any more. So they are attacking the administration on the war, and giving hope, if not aid and comfort to the enemy.

I don't think most liberals and lefties realize the full implication of what they are doing. That to the jihadis, a communist, Marxist, Socialist or what have you that are protesting the war, are just as kaffir as the rest of us who support it. And will be just as dead if these guys succeed. I really don't think they get that, or even would believe it.
Posted by: Ben || 04/30/2004 5:25 Comments || Top||

#5  Ben, How right you are. The Democrats in the country have the blood of American soldiers on their hands. Hillary Clinton slams the President to the Arab news, then threatens MSNBC about running with the story. Treason comes to mind. First, she claims she never gave an interview, then when caught red-handed, she still denies, then finally says, who cares? Oh gee, she lied. Surprise, surprise. Ted Kennedy, Robert Byrd, Bob Kerrey, John Kerry...They are so hateful towards this administration. Jamie Gorelick and the 9/11 commission...what a joke. After hearing and seeing what has been going on with this mess, it seems clear that one of the best deterants to another 9/11 is to make sure the Democrats never get to sit in the White House again. Boston should save money on Homeland Security this year for the Dem convention. After all, the Dems have been doing the enemy's work very well.
Posted by: jawa || 04/30/2004 6:15 Comments || Top||

#6  Excellent comments, folks. Thx!
Posted by: .com || 04/30/2004 8:09 Comments || Top||

#7  You got a link for that Hillary interview,Jawa?
Posted by: raptor || 04/30/2004 9:16 Comments || Top||


Iraq-Jordan
Father Preserves His Moslem Honor By Strangling 14-Year-Old Daughter
Ignoring the pleas of his 14-year-old daughter to spare her life, Mehmet Halitogullari pulled on a wire wrapped around her neck and strangled her — supposedly to restore the family’s honor after she was kidnapped and raped. Nuran Halitogullari ... is the latest victim in a long history of so-called "honor" killings. .... Each year, dozens of girls are killed in Turkey by their relatives for allegedly disgracing their families — some for merely being seen speaking to men. The practice is especially common in the more traditional southeast and among families who have migrated to big cities from the region. ....

Parliament last year voted to raise the punishment for such crimes to as long as 24 years in prison. But a loophole in the laws allows relatives to escape with sentences as light as eight years if they can prove they were "provoked" into committing the crime. .... Turkey has embarked on a major overhaul of its penal code and is expected to rectify the loophole, but the draft code is still weeks away from being endorsed. Some politicians on Thursday called on the government to immediately bring the issue to parliament. Lawyer Senal Saruhan, a woman’s rights advocate, fears the draft may not go far enough. She insists that family members who incite or encourage the killings should be punished alongside the perpetrators. ....

Women’s groups believe that a number of suicides among young women in the southeast are actually murders by relatives who believe they are saving the family honor. Often the youngest member of the family is forced to carry out the killings in the belief that a youth would get a less-stringent punishment. ....

Halitogullari was abducted in Istanbul on her way back from a trip to the supermarket and raped over six days. She was rescued by police and returned to her family. .... Mehmet Hatipogullari told police he and other relatives took the girl to an aunt’s home where he strangled her, ignoring her pleas and her cries. "I decided to kill her because our honor was dirtied," the newspaper Sabah quoted the father as saying. "I didn’t listen to her pleas, I wrapped the wire around her neck and pulled at it until she died."

He said he buried her body beneath a chicken coop, which upset his other children, and later reburied her in a forest. The newspaper said Halitogullari also had planned to kill his daughter’s rapist.
Posted by: Mike Sylwester || 04/30/2004 11:47:15 PM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  God is great, baby, God is truly great!
Posted by: BigEd || 05/01/2004 0:27 Comments || Top||

#2  Family honor restoration has really gone down hill since the days of Chivalry.
Posted by: Super Hose || 05/01/2004 0:31 Comments || Top||

#3  So, basically, they failed to protect her so she has to die?

Perhaps they're not really "protecting their honor" but erasing a reminder of their inadequacy?
Posted by: Robert Crawford || 05/01/2004 11:52 Comments || Top||


Comparison of Zarqawi’s Statements About Using Chemical Weapons
In his latest audiotape, Ansar al-Islam’s Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi admits that Jordan was in fact targeted. But Zarqawi accuses the Jordanian government of lying about chemical bombs being used in the attack and denies that al-Qaida has chemical weapons:

The allegation that there was a chemical bomb to kill thousands of people is a mere lie. God knows, if we did possess a chemical bomb, we wouldn’t hesitate one second to use it to hit Israeli cities such as Eilat and Tel Aviv.

However, according to an Ansar al-Islam statement distributed on leaflets in Iraq around mid April, the group not only has weapons of mass destruction, including chemical weapons, it intends on using them soon:

Prepare yourselves, O mean, terrorist, and lying Americans. For we will teach you lessons that you will not forget as long as you live about sacrifice and martyrdom for the sake of homelands and the defense of honor, principles, and values. We will strike at you with all the weapons available to us, including conventional, chemical, nuclear, and biological weapons. You will see blacker days than the 11 September incidents.
Posted by: Mike Sylwester || 04/30/2004 11:26:47 PM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:


Marines hand over control of Fallujah to ex-Saddam general
US marines handed over control of Fallujah to a former general in Saddam Hussein’s army yesterday and began to withdraw troops from positions close to the besieged city.

In a significant climbdown by the US, the former Republican Guard general Jasim Mohammed Saleh arrived in Fallujah to take command of 1,100 soldiers from the disbanded Iraqi army who live in the city. And in an apparent attempt to sabotage the new agreement, a suicide car bomb killed two US Marines close to Fallujah yesterday.

"We have now begun forming a new emergency military force," General Saleh said, adding that the people of Fallujah "rejected" US soldiers.

General Saleh was greeted by cheering crowds waving the old Iraqi flag, abolished by the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council. He met tribal leaders in a mosque. A US Marine officer said it would not be a problem if those who had been fighting the soldiers joined the new force.

A demand that weapons such as rocket-propelled grenade launchers must be handed over has been softened into a demand that they should be taken off the streets. The US says foreign fighters it insists played a leading role in the resistance may have gone to other parts of Iraq. Other officials doubt if there were ever many there.

If the plan to end the siege is implemented it will be an astonishing retreat by the US from its original determination to capture those responsible for killing and mutilating four American security men in March. General John Abizaid, commander of US forces in the Middle East, said the killers had probably already left the city.

The US willingness to concede so much is a recognition that the political cost of the siege has been high. Eight US Marines and several hundred Iraqis, many of them civilians, died.

In Najaf, a spokesman for Muktada al-Sadr, the radical Shia leader, said talks had started with tribal leaders and police. He said Sadr’s Mehdi Army might hand security to them and leave the city. Sadr would stay. In return, the US would promise not to enter Najaf or be hostile to Sadr’s followers.
Posted by: tipper || 04/30/2004 9:46:51 PM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Reading this it looks like we surrendered....
Posted by: CrazyFool || 04/30/2004 22:24 Comments || Top||

#2  CrazyFool: Reading this it looks like we surrendered....

You have to realize that this story was published in al-Independent, a paper to the left of al-Guardian.
Posted by: Zhang Fei || 04/30/2004 22:37 Comments || Top||

#3  I can't really complain. The Marines killed hundreds of jihadis and probably maimed hundreds more in exchange for less than a dozen killed in action. The maimed jihadis will serve as a visible deterrent to those would take up arms against GI's in the future.

My feeling here is that Bush erred by appointing Abizaid the Centcom chief. The guy's too much into nuance and negotiations. It's too bad that Tommy Franks quit after the large-scale fighting stopped - we could have used him in the aftermath.
Posted by: Zhang Fei || 04/30/2004 22:48 Comments || Top||

#4  Please say it ain't so!
Posted by: Uschi || 04/30/2004 23:25 Comments || Top||


Book Names Iraqi in Alleged '99 Bid to Buy Uranium
But, I thought Joe Wilson said it didn't happen?
It was Saddam Hussein's information minister, Mohammed Saeed Sahhaf, often referred to in the Western press as "Baghdad Bob," who approached an official of the African nation of Niger in 1999 to discuss trade -- an overture the official saw as a possible effort to buy uranium.
Oh, sure. And which member of the Bush administration is flogging this lie around?

That's according to a new book Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former ambassador who was sent to Niger by the CIA in 2002 to investigate reports that Iraq had been trying to buy enriched "yellowcake" uranium. Wilson wrote that he did not learn the identity of the Iraqi official until this January, when he talked again with his Niger source.
Err, didn't you investigate this and swear that there was no Niger connection, Joe? And that Bush lied about it?

Sahhaf's role casts more light on an aspect of Wilson's report to the CIA that was publicly disclosed last summer. On the heels of Wilson's public criticism that intelligence was exaggerated and his statement that his trip to Niger had turned up no uranium sales to Iraq, agency Director George J. Tenet took the blame for allowing President Bush to make assertions about the Iraqi quest for nuclear material in his 2003 State of the Union address. Tenet said the intelligence had been too "fragmentary" to merit inclusion in the speech.
Tenet's statement noted that Wilson had reported back to the CIA that a former Niger official told him that "in June 1999 a businessman approached him and insisted that the former official meet with an Iraqi delegation to discuss 'expanding commercial relations' between Iraq and Niger. The former official interpreted the overture as an attempt to discuss uranium sales."
Gee, that sounds a lot like the statement from the SOTU speech, that Sammy was trying to buy uranium in Africa. You remember Joe, the speech you said was wrong.

In his book, Wilson recounts his encounter with the unnamed Niger official in 2002, saying, he "hesitated and looked up to the sky as if plumbing the depths of his memory, then offered that perhaps the Iraqi might have wanted to talk about uranium." Wilson did not get the Iraqi's name in 2002, but he writes that he talked to his source again four months ago, and that the former official said he saw Sahhaf on television before the start of the war and recognized him as the person he talked to in 1999.
Gee, so the British intel and Bush's speech were right after all.
Posted by: Steve || 04/30/2004 3:58:14 PM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Joe's got a book out,but I'm surprised this slipped through his "Spincheck". Sounds like Joe's another partisan hack, no? But we already knew that. What a POS. Who was the idiot that picked him? Tenet? Time to clean house when you take over from a hostile former admin....
Posted by: Frank G || 04/30/2004 16:21 Comments || Top||

#2  Y'know, I always thought Baghdad Bob had a glow about him.




"It is not true! I handled no Uranium from Niger. Booosh is a liar"

Posted by: BigEd || 04/30/2004 16:26 Comments || Top||

#3  ROFL, Big Ed!
I love Baghdad Bob!
Posted by: Jen || 04/30/2004 16:42 Comments || Top||

#4  So everything Wilson said was a lie. Funny, huh.
Posted by: someone || 04/30/2004 16:46 Comments || Top||

#5  someone: Wilson is a charter member of the "I can tell he's lying, his lips are moving" crowd.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut || 04/30/2004 17:55 Comments || Top||

#6  This is worse than a lie. Wilson appears to have deliberately misled the CIA and put his personal political agenda ahead of the security of the United States. Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame should be charged with treason and prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
Posted by: john || 04/30/2004 19:53 Comments || Top||


Home Front: Culture Wars
Idiot Actor Lobbies For The Little People
Idiot Actor - my apologies for the redundancy...

Ben Affleck lobbies lawmakers to raise US minimum wage

Why not donate the proceeds from Gigli? Doh!

Thu Apr 29, 7:45 PM ET Add Entertainment - AFP to My Yahoo!

WASHINGTON (AFP) - He is one of Hollywood’s idiotarians hypocrites overrated actors doooshbaaaags best-compensated actors, but matinee idol Ben Affleck (news) came to the US Congress Thursday to lobby for higher pay for some of America’s lowest-paid workers.

Why not tell people to go out and vote, just like you do? Doh!

Affleck, who for now earns millions per screen appearance, appeared alongside the bar with Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy to pour a few highballs urge lawmakers to increase the federal minimum wage from its current five dollars and 15 cents per hour to seven dollars per hour.

Sure, let’s just throw a bunch of people out of work. Why can’t you and Ted make a few waitress sandwiches instead?

A Masshole Massachusetts native, Affleck said Kennedy tapped him to appear at the news conference to bring more visibility to the cause.

"Maybe the senator saw my move ’Gigli’ and assumed I would soon be working for minimum wage myself," Affleck said, indulging in a bit of self-ridicule over the widely-panned film in which he co-starred with ex-fiancee Jennifer Lopez (news).

I swear I did not read ahead there, folks...
Posted by: Raj || 04/30/2004 3:09:36 PM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1 

AFLAC

Posted by: BigEd || 04/30/2004 15:14 Comments || Top||

#2  Mmmm, Jennifer Lopez sandwich. Gaaaaaah.
Posted by: Homer || 04/30/2004 15:32 Comments || Top||

#3  The Little People? Matt Damon?
Posted by: Robert Crawford || 04/30/2004 15:40 Comments || Top||

#4  Gee, Ben, why don't we just raise the minimum wage to $20/hour and get rid of poverty altogether? That should solve everybody's problem...
Posted by: Dar || 04/30/2004 15:44 Comments || Top||

#5  Quack!
Posted by: BigEd || 04/30/2004 15:45 Comments || Top||

#6  that cute pichure biged! dar i think you on to somthing!
Posted by: muck4doo || 04/30/2004 15:50 Comments || Top||

#7  dar tryin keep the mans heel on my head ima need 27 an hour so i can mediate more
Posted by: HalfEmpty || 04/30/2004 17:04 Comments || Top||

#8  amen half!!!
Posted by: muck4doo || 04/30/2004 17:21 Comments || Top||

#9  Wonder how much he pays his domestic help?


Posted by: raptor || 04/30/2004 18:49 Comments || Top||

#10  Wonder how much he pays his domestic help?


Posted by: raptor || 04/30/2004 18:50 Comments || Top||

#11  Ben has some pretty enlightened ideas. I wonder if Congress should solicit Randy Moss' ideas about how to resolve ethnic tensions in Kosovo.
Posted by: Super Hose || 04/30/2004 21:39 Comments || Top||

#12  Shit man..... If this only helps people, LET'S MAKE IT $100 AN HOUR! I mean, what can it hurt?? Right?? Think about it........
Posted by: Halfass Pete || 04/30/2004 22:42 Comments || Top||


Iraq-Jordan
Rumsfeld’s War, Powell’s Occupation
EFL
Rumsfeld wanted Iraqis in on the action — right from the beginning.

The latest post-hoc conventional wisdom on Iraq is that Defense Secretary Rumsfeld won the war but lost the occupation. There are two problems with this analysis (which comes, most forcefully, from The Weekly Standard). First, it’s not Rumsfeld’s occupation; it’s Colin Powell’s and George Tenet’s. Second, although it’s painfully obvious that much is wrong with this occupation, it’s simple-minded to assume that more troops will fix it. More troops may be needed now, but more of the same will not do the job. Something different is needed — and was, right from the start.

A Rumsfeld occupation would have been different, and still might be. Rumsfeld wanted to put an Iraqi face on everything at the outset — not just on the occupation of Iraq, but on its liberation too. That would have made a world of difference.

Rumsfeld’s plan was to train and equip — and then transport to Iraq — some 10,000 Shia and Sunni freedom fighters led by Shia exile leader Ahmed Chalabi and his cohorts in the INC, the multi-ethnic anti-Saddam coalition he created. There, they would have joined with thousands of experienced Kurdish freedom fighters, ably led, politically and militarily, by Jalal Talabani and Massoud Barzani. Working with our special forces, this trio would have sprung into action at the start of the war, striking from the north, helping to drive Baathist thugs from power, and joining Coalition forces in the liberation of Baghdad. That would have put a proud, victorious, multi-ethnic Iraqi face on the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, and it would have given enormous prestige to three stubbornly independent and unashamedly pro-American Iraqi freedom fighters: Chalabi, Talabani, and Barzani.

Jay Garner, the retired American general Rumsfeld chose to head the civilian administration of the new Iraq, planned to capitalize on that prestige immediately by appointing all three, along with six others, to head up Iraq’s new transitional government. He planned to cede power to them in a matter of weeks — not months or years — and was confident that they would work with him, not against him, because two of them already had. General Garner, after all, is the man who headed the successful humanitarian rescue mission that saved the Kurds in the disastrous aftermath of Gulf War I, after the State Department-CIA crowd and like thinkers in the first Bush administration betrayed them. Kurds are not a small minority — and they remember. The hero’s welcome they gave General Garner when he returned to Iraq last April made that crystal clear.

Finally, Secretary Rumsfeld wanted to cut way down on the infiltration of Syrian and Iranian agents and their foreign terrorist recruits, not just by trying to catch them at the border — a losing game, given the length of those borders — but by pursuing them across the border into Syria to strike hard at both the terrorists and their Syrian sponsors, a move that would have forced Iran as well as Syria to reconsider the price of trying to sabotage the reconstruction of Iraq.
snip
Posted by: Sherry || 04/30/2004 1:54:40 PM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Amen. No, makes that afuckingmen. Thank you Barbara Lener for writing this article - and thank you Sherry for posting it!
Posted by: .com || 04/30/2004 14:19 Comments || Top||

#2  Very interesting peice.
Posted by: Bomb-a-rama || 04/30/2004 15:40 Comments || Top||

#3  It's all hindsite now, there is no way of knowing if the Iraqi force would have buckled rather than fight other IRaqi's (as so many did when the Fallujah bit started).
Posted by: Ruprecht || 04/30/2004 15:56 Comments || Top||

#4  If this is true, it confirms what Ive said before, that the problem in this administration has been the near CONSTANT infighting on the national security team. Look, its not the first time in history that a Sec of State and a SecDef have been at swords point. When you do, you either have a strong National Security Advisor (a la Kissinger) or a strong President (a la Reagan) to put things in order. It seems we have neither.
Posted by: Liberalhawk || 04/30/2004 16:06 Comments || Top||

#5  I remember there were around 3,000 Iraqi-Americans getting trained in Hungary before we went in. One day I picked up the paper and read the program had been disbanded. Never saw why.

Yes, LH. Infighting is nothing new. That's why the Prez has to lay down the law, shake up the cultures at CIA, State, and DOD, if necessary. It seems Rumsfeld has been doing that at DOD. Powell, on the other hand, has not done the same at State. I like the guy and he's talented, but I get the impression that 20 years of PC culture at State has calcified thinking-out-of-the box there. Tenet? Don't make me laugh. He said to the 9/11 committee that it would take 5 more years to get Humint up to snuff? I've said it before here: How the hell did Johnny Walker Lind, a Marin County doper, get all the way to Afghanistan as an AQ adherent just on Mommy's credit card? Johnny didn't need 5 years to get himself in place. So keep Rummy, get rid of Colin and George. Toss in Mueller, too. I read yesterday (NY Sun or City Journal, I think) one huge irony of post 9/11 is that Poindexter has been the only guy to get fired. Maybe the writer forgot Jay Garner. Anyway, the point is, there are too many folks walking around DC quite comfortable in the fact that a check is coming on pay day.

W, I told you this time last year that Iraq was not to be a public works project. I think I also said we're not in this thing to be popular. In fact, we've never been popular in the 3rd world pages of Le Monde, Al Ahram Weekly, or the Arab News, even when Clinton was Prez. Victory is the only option. If you don't follow through to the end W, then I'll be mighty disappointed. Our guys and gals serving will be even more disappointed. The families of the dead and wounded will be let down. It's remarkable that families quoted in the Chicago Trib portraits of those cut down are 99% behind W. Why? Because their kids were. The tragedy would be to cut and run, or at least muddle things so much that we and the real Iraqi public lose the peace. Don't let these sacrifices be in vain. Don't let our enemies feel smug. Lincoln and Churchill went to the very end.
Posted by: Michael || 04/30/2004 17:18 Comments || Top||

#6  LH--

1. Is the problem that there is near constant infighting in the admin or that one of the sides is wrong? I think it's the latter-- and that the wrong side is the DOS/CIA side.

2. Maybe Rice and Dubyah lack the stones or whatever to keep the DOS/CIA in line. But just as depressing, maybe they find their case convincing much of the time. After all, liberals are way smart folks-- just ask one!-- and the majority of them are not hawks.... Right?

Posted by: Wuzzalib || 04/30/2004 18:51 Comments || Top||


Afghanistan/South Asia
Taliban poison schoolgirls to discourage female education
Three Afghan schoolgirls were in critical condition after being poisoned in the southeastern town of Khost in what officials said on Friday was a Taliban attempt to discourage female education in the region.
A Taliban spokesman denied the allegation.
The girls, aged between 10 and 15, ate poisoned biscuits offered to them by a man on Wednesday, said the spokeswoman for the provincial department of Women’s Affairs, Shahina Sharif.
The military commander of the province Khialbaz Khan said the ousted Taliban militia were behind the poisoning to "deter girls from going to school."
However, Taliban spokesman Litfullah Hakimi, speaking to AFP from an unknown location, denied the allegation.
The girls had been attending the only school which accepts females in Khost.
Posted by: TS (vice girl) || 04/30/2004 1:17:04 PM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Mullah Omar Sez : "God is Great. Poison girls who have the audacity to want to learn to read. God is Great"
Posted by: BigEd || 04/30/2004 13:32 Comments || Top||

#2  next leson shuld be not accept food from strangers.
Posted by: muck4doo || 04/30/2004 13:39 Comments || Top||

#3  The tender, merciful love of Allan in action.
Posted by: sludj || 04/30/2004 13:41 Comments || Top||

#4  I can see that yet another element of democracy has so far failed to take root in the Afghan culture - vigilante justice.
Posted by: Super Hose || 04/30/2004 13:48 Comments || Top||

#5  To be fair this might not be the taliban but some pervert. Perverts exist everywhere.

On the other hand the 'officals' might have a damn good reason to blame the Taliban and I would not put it past them......
Posted by: CrazyFool || 04/30/2004 13:52 Comments || Top||

#6  [Off-topic or abusive comments deleted]
Posted by: Antiwar TROLL || 04/30/2004 14:10 Comments || Top||

#7  It is not against God's will to learn.

It is, however, against Allah's.
Posted by: Robert Crawford || 04/30/2004 14:12 Comments || Top||

#8  like peples throwing rock at kinegartners to right antiwar?
Posted by: muck4doo || 04/30/2004 14:12 Comments || Top||

#9  [Off-topic or abusive comments deleted]
Posted by: Antiwar TROLL || 04/30/2004 14:28 Comments || Top||

#10  Ask a Muslim if Allah had a Son, and you will come to understand that God and Allah are not the same.
Posted by: Robert Crawford || 04/30/2004 14:29 Comments || Top||

#11  [Off-topic or abusive comments deleted]
Posted by: Antiwar TROLL || 04/30/2004 14:34 Comments || Top||

#12  They are the same It's just that Christians believe Jesus is God's son and Muslims do not.

And if you tell a Muslim that God did have a son, he'll kill you. Otherwise, they're the same, yep, yep, no difference at all.
Posted by: Steve White || 04/30/2004 14:47 Comments || Top||

#13  Excuse me, but probably poorly educated? Like that isn't self-evident?

Jumpin' Jesus on a pogo stick, what freakin' planet do you come from, Antiwar?
Posted by: Raj || 04/30/2004 14:48 Comments || Top||

#14  im guesing antiwar never going to adress the kinegartners in israel. she didnt last time i dont know why thought this time be diferent.
Posted by: muck4doo || 04/30/2004 14:49 Comments || Top||

#15  so anti-war is saying (at least the part that is readable) that it was good thing for the talibs to be overthrown....
Posted by: Dan || 04/30/2004 16:15 Comments || Top||

#16  "It's just that the Taliban (who are probably poorly educated) have the wrong ideas about what God wants."

And it's just Antibrain war that wishes cancer on people--guess that's not the wrong idea about what God wants . . . (but that was probably only "Antiwar" #2, or #3 spouting off--right, Antiwar #1?). In any case, why do I get the uncomfortable feeling that, if possible, Antiwar would have had no trouble offering me a cancer-causing poisoned "bisquit " of her own a few days ago. Personally, I don't see any difference between Pakistani Princess Antimatter and the Taliban.

And "Allah" (the god of War, historically) "is God," Antiwar claims. So is she, ( he, it, them) against Allah, then? Since she goes by "Antiwar" --her name would be properly translated Anti-Allah or Anti-God. (Little "antichrist" is more like it.) I'm so confused . . . ( not ).

"Hopefully Afghani children will receive a good education and grow up being able to think and the Taliban will lose it's influence."

Yeah. Like those little Israeli kindergarteners Antisense is so fond of. But Anti-war-against-Islam: if they grow up to think , they won't listen to you either. I'm sure you don't want that to happen, do you?

And Antilight: I've been meaning to ask you something. You see, I'm interested in learning all I can about Islam and about how we can bring peace to this troubled world. It's sad when bad things happen--like the poisoning of those little girls.

My question is: When a female Moslem dies a martyr, does she get 72 virgin males to f-ck < EM> her for all eternity, like the guy Moslems get? Or is the sex-discrimination-rampant-in-Islam stuff simply confined to the here and now?

Oh--a few more questions along the same lines. Are there ever any arguments over who gets to "do" the "glorified martyr" person? Or does everyone just line up. Is it take-a-number like at the post office? How many times a day do they--you know? What do the others do during their "off time?" Do they watch, or is it private? Semi-private?

And lastly: Are the females that make it to Islam-ick paradise "de"-infibulated? Are the female virgin groups infibulated virgins or not?

Do write soon, because I'm just concerned that if young people are blowing themselves and others up for nothing, (I mean, like, if the cashing-in-on-the-free-virgin-sex stuff is not true or something) I think you'd be just the person to stop them. I just don't know if you've ever thought about all the good you could be doing in the world, Antiwar.

Just think! Our very own Antiwar busy putting an end to all the senseless killing and poisoning! Wouldn't that be special?!!


LOL sludj, Raj and mucky!
Posted by: cingold || 04/30/2004 16:29 Comments || Top||

#17  Uh the last post #16 was ME, ex-lib. Oooooopsie-dooopsie, doopsie . . . Occasionally friends of mine highjack my computer.

Sorry 'bout that cingold!

(cingold's gonna kill me . . . he's a very diplomatic, polite person--unlike me . . . )
Posted by: cingold || 04/30/2004 16:35 Comments || Top||

#18  I really do know how to operate this computer. Really I do.

Okay: #16 & #17 are ME-ME-ME ex-lib (who will be dead about 6:30 tonight) Well, it's been really nice knowing all of you.
Posted by: ex-lib || 04/30/2004 16:37 Comments || Top||

#19  Odd duck
Posted by: Shipman || 04/30/2004 16:39 Comments || Top||

#20  stay safe ex-lib :)
Posted by: muck4doo || 04/30/2004 17:20 Comments || Top||

#21  How dare we question a vital aspect of the "cultural heritage" of the Taliban! Haven't you heard of "multiculturalism"?
________________________________borgboy speaks in the subjunctive...
Posted by: borgboy || 04/30/2004 17:28 Comments || Top||

#22  I like the Taliban...well done after a hellfire hit
Posted by: Frank G || 04/30/2004 17:31 Comments || Top||

#23  people,people,people it's all good.After all it's part thier culture.Just ask Antigum.
Posted by: raptor || 04/30/2004 18:15 Comments || Top||

#24  I've seen more advanced cultures in a petri dish
Posted by: Frank G || 04/30/2004 18:35 Comments || Top||

#25  Now Frank, you really dont have to insult petri dish cultures do you? Have some cultural diversity.....
Posted by: CrazyFool || 04/30/2004 18:39 Comments || Top||

#26  How come Islamic scholar Antiwar won't answer me? I still want to know about those guy virgins!
Posted by: ex-lib || 04/30/2004 21:16 Comments || Top||

#27  Yes, yes, yes, I know ex-lib, and occassionally highjack her computer, and (yes) she's dead . . . ; )

OTOH, she writes well (if a bit racey at times), makes some great points, and if (say, as a penance) she were to do all¹ my writing for me . . .

¹ All, meaning motions, responses, trial briefs, appellate briefs, position statements, pleadings . . . : )
Posted by: cingold || 04/30/2004 22:02 Comments || Top||

#28  [Off-topic or abusive comments deleted]
Posted by: Antiwar TROLL || 04/30/2004 22:05 Comments || Top||

#29  Antiwar is a fake -- she pretends to be a nice, concerned liberal, but s/he gets real nasty when support for islamofascists (including undermining Western society and values) is confronted too directly. So as not to waste bandwidth, you can read the Same Story, Different Day right here.
Posted by: cingold || 04/30/2004 22:06 Comments || Top||

#30  [Off-topic or abusive comments deleted]
Posted by: Antiwar TROLL || 04/30/2004 22:12 Comments || Top||

#31  ex-lib for the answers to your questions, just go here or here
Posted by: tipper || 04/30/2004 22:34 Comments || Top||

#32  Oh, Antisemite, you're back? Can't believe you're commenting on a thread about Islamonazis.

They are the same It's just that Christians believe Jesus is God's son and Muslims do not

Yeah, except that they disagree with the central tenet of Christianity, they're just the same. And then there's the part where it's a drooling, Jewhating, death cult that never ever looks in the mirror. No wonder Antisemite doesn't think that's much of a problem--for her, that's a feature, not a bug.
Posted by: BMN || 04/30/2004 23:26 Comments || Top||

#33  Very sad whoever did it. It just shows that religion can be harmful when taken to extremes as the Taliban do with Islam. Everyone has a right to an education. It is not against God's will to learn.
Posted by: Antiwar || 04/30/2004 14:10 Comments || Top||

#34  Allah is God It's just that the Taliban (who are probably poorly educated) have the wrong ideas about what God wants. A poor illiterate man will hear some Taliban person say something about what he (the taliban person)thinks about what God wants and as the poor man cannot read and inform himself he believes it. It is not God's will of course that girls not learn anything it's just the Taliban's view. Hopefully Afghani children will receive a good education and grow up being able to think and the Taliban will lose it's influence.
Posted by: Antiwar || 04/30/2004 14:28 Comments || Top||

#35  They are the same It's just that Christians believe Jesus is God's son and Muslims do not.
Posted by: Antiwar || 04/30/2004 14:34 Comments || Top||

#36  Ex lib you are SO prejudiced maybe you should join the KKK. You say you are ex lib does this mean you once had different views?
Posted by: Antiwar || 04/30/2004 22:05 Comments || Top||

#37  Cingold do you have any idea about ANYTHING a person who in your words proudly supports President Bush cannot afford to criticise anyone else. Think of all those dead Americans who will never come home. I know you don't care about all the lives in Iraq Bush has ruined etc etc
Posted by: Antiwar || 04/30/2004 22:12 Comments || Top||


Iraq-Jordan
Kimmitt: Marines Not Leaving Fallujah
BAGHDAD, Iraq - U.S. Marines will maintain a strong presence in and around Fallujah despite an agreement to hand over security to a new Iraqi force largely made up of former Iraqi soldiers, a senior U.S. officer said Friday.
Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt made his remarks as U.S. officials in Iraq and Washington said an agreement had been reached to establish an Iraqi unit to assume security and end the monthlong siege of Fallujah. Witnesses saw Marines withdrawing from positions in the southeastern part of the city on Friday and handing them over to the Iraqis.
However, Kimmitt told reporters that the new Iraqi force will be "completely integrated" with Marines, who will retain strong presence "in and around" the city. He insisted that the Marines were not "withdrawing" but were "repositioning" their forces.
Hah, just like I thought. Iraqis get to patrol the quiet sector under Marine direction and Marines "reposition" right down the insurgents throats.

Kimmitt said he had no information on the background of the reported new commander of the Fallujah force, former Maj. Gen. Jassim Mohammed Saleh. But Kimmitt said the commander had been vetted by the Marines who had full confidence in him.
Got themselves a tame general to put a Iraqi face on things.
Posted by: Steve || 04/30/2004 11:19:50 AM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Didn't I hear about "helpful" military officials before the invasion?

Could this Maj Gen Saleh be one of those?
Posted by: BigEd || 04/30/2004 11:42 Comments || Top||

#2  Wonder if he is one of Chief Wiggles generals? Would be interesting to know if he knows this guy.
Posted by: Sherry || 04/30/2004 11:42 Comments || Top||

#3  Read Belmont Club for background on General Saleh.
Posted by: Anonymous4690 || 04/30/2004 12:07 Comments || Top||

#4  The bad guys still need to be killed. An Iraqi face in the rest of the town should be good for the after action stuff. But make no mistake, the bad guys get whacked. If not it's Gaza.

I also think the badies are suicide types who were to cause a Grozny type fight. If, as reported at Belmont Club (I love that name) the Marines have manuvered the enemy into a manageable kill zone, well I am impressed.

But please Mr Custer, don't let the bad guys go. Don't let the guys who paid the price to have done it in vain.
Posted by: Lucky || 04/30/2004 12:49 Comments || Top||

#5  Lucky, you have it right. What percentage of radical Islamist jihadists, who think it is cool to sacrifice their children or themselves for the cause, will just change their minds and become responsible citizens if there are Iraqi faces in the uniforms that oppose them. Aren't the new Iraqi soldiers infidels too?

Posted by: Sam || 04/30/2004 15:06 Comments || Top||

#6  The most dangerous typical American assumption is that the Falluja investment is like an hour-long TV drama. That is, that the Marines are like actors, performing a "figure it out as you go along" script.
These are highly-educated, highly-trained personnel with college educated officers who have received a great deal of tactical, strategic and historical education. Every battle they are *going* to fight is looked at ahead of time from the perspective of every battle listed in Dupuy and Dupuy.

Everything they do is calculated. The enemy is left no advantage. Every mistake is exploited to the full. And it doesn't stop. Every evaluation of their situation fine tunes their activities.

The logistics are there, the intelligence is there, the discipline and morale are there, and the will is there. Practically speaking, it would take a well-armed force with perhaps 10-20 times their number to be a serious threat. These Marines are deadly, and again, they do not stop for commercials.

Their mission is clear, with or without friendly Iraqis: with minimum loss of civilian life, they will go through the entire city and systematically and thoroughly capture or kill every opponent and disarm the populace.

Everything else, including the diplomatic side, is just hogwash.
Posted by: Anonymoose || 04/30/2004 17:36 Comments || Top||


Deal Near for Iraqi Patrol in Fallujah
The U.S. military is in a "step by step effort" to train an Iraqi force to patrol the besieged city of Fallujah, the U.S. military's top general in the region said Friday. But he cautioned it was an opportunity, not a final agreement, and said Iraqis must still meet conditions.
Patrol the city, not a turn over of control.

"It's a possible breakthrough," Gen. John Abizaid said of efforts by U.S. commanders in Iraq on a deal to have a battalion of Iraqi soldiers handle security within Fallujah. "But certainly the conditions that must be met are foremost in our minds."
Earlier, a senior defense official in Washington, speaking on condition of anonymity, had said a deal was reached by U.S. commanders inside Iraq to have the brigade led by Maj. Gen. Jassim Mohammed Saleh, a veteran of Saddam's Republican Guard. Abizaid refused to confirm Saleh's leadership, or provide any details.
The senior defense official said the Fallujah Brigade will consist of former Iraqi officers and enlisted soldiers in the Fallujah area who volunteer and are vetted by U.S. authorities. The official contended that no representative of the insurgents who are holed up inside the city was part of the agreement.
Speaking of past efforts to put Iraqis into leadership positions in the Iraqi military, Abizaid said: "The most important lesson we've learned from this is we must have reliable Iraqi leadership."
Which has been pretty hard to find up to now.
Posted by: Steve || 04/30/2004 10:02:12 AM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  How to you vet an entire Brigade in a few days.

I suppose you could do some minimal patrols and kick out the people who screw up then some more difficult patrols and kick out the screw ups then get some info from the city elders and kick out a few more. This process however is going to take more than a few days.
Posted by: mhw || 04/30/2004 12:45 Comments || Top||


Fallujah Rebels Captured and Executed 17 American Snipers On Top of Building
From Jihad Unspun
Mafkarat al-Islam correspondent on the ground with the Iraqi Resistance in Fallujah has provided further details ... about the execution of 17 American snipers atop a building in Fallujah by Resistance fighters during an American incursion into al-Jawlan neighborhood in the city.

The correspondent writes that after the occupation forces violated the cease fire that had been signed on Sunday and attacked Fallujah’s al-Jawlan neighborhood, the occupation troops planted a number of snipers atop a villa overlooking the as-Saddah Bridge crossing the Euphrates River. The bridge links the city of Fallujah’s al-Jawlan neighborhood with the rural areas surrounding the city. The villa in question was a two-story structure going by the name “Double Manyo,” and appears to have belonged to one of the wealthy residents of the city who left after the aggression began.

The group of snipers on the roof of the villa had the job of covering the aggressor tanks as they advanced into al-Jawlan district. The snipers sowed terror and fear among the families and people of Fallujah who were crossing the bridge in their attempt to return to their homes. The snipers fired at the civilians as they crossed the bridge, killing and wounding a large number of women and children.

The Iraqi Resistance threw back the American attempt to penetrate al-Jawlan, counterattacking the occupation troops and forcing the tanks to retreat before their blistering fire. The fighters’ waged an intense resistance with rocket-propelled grenades, and gunfire left the villa isolated and exposed, the 17 snipers on its roof cut off and stranded. About 35 Resistance fighters stormed up into the building, filling the beleaguered snipers with the terror of certain death. Their primary job was to serve as sharp shooters, not to engage in hand-to-hand combat with the Resistance fighters. Besides that, they were no doubt in terror of the anger of Fallujah and its residents.

The Resistance fighters lay into them, killing every one of them by slitting their throats, filled with intense fury over the way that the snipers had terrified and killed children and women despite the cease fire agreed to between the two sides.

It should be noted that the website Mafkarat al-Islam (www.islammemo.cc) is the only media outlet that has a correspondent on the front lines of the battle in al-Fallujah, bringing live and precise information from the front line of the field of conflict. No other outlet, be it a newspaper or satellite TV company is covering this front line sector of the battle. Besides that, only one Arab satellite TV company, Al-Jazeera has been covering the humanitarian sides of the siege and aggression on al-Fallujah and the effect they are having on the residents of the city whose lives have turned to tragedy. Because of the pressures under which they operate, pressures exerted by the occupation forces and the occupation regime, Ak-Jazeera largely limits itself to the humanitarian side of the conflict offering only a relatively small amount of information on the actual fighting. Their efforts have had tremendous impact and deserve our thanks for exposing the crimes committed by the occupation forces against the civilians, women and children, who are not serving as Resistance fighters, contrary to what the aggressor occupation forces claim.
Posted by: Mike Sylwester || 04/30/2004 9:50:04 AM || Comments || Link || [1 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Just curious as to why this 'jihad unspun' crap gets posted every day? I thought this was a news site, not a fiction site.
Posted by: AllahHateMe || 04/30/2004 9:57 Comments || Top||

#2  Interesting that they can't provide a single photo, or name from a dog tag, of the snipers they killed. It almost makes one doubt their credibility.
Posted by: ruprecht || 04/30/2004 10:00 Comments || Top||

#3  almost? Jihad Unspun is interesting only in seeing what kool-aid they're feeding the gullible faithful. Note to bad guys: all snipers are dead - J.U. sez so! - go ahead and poke your little beturbanned pinheads up and have gunsex...it's safe! J.U. sez so!
Posted by: Frank G || 04/30/2004 10:06 Comments || Top||

#4  How about this piece of idiocy from them 2 days ago.
They are living in an alternative reality, namely f*cked in the head
Posted by: tipper || 04/30/2004 10:20 Comments || Top||

#5  We post the Jihad Unspun crap for a look at what the Bad Guys are saying and thinking. I wish TalibanOnline and Azzam were readily accessible and that Ummah News hadn't stopped operations a year ago. It provides a look into the Bad Guys' heads, though I'll admit it's not as satisfactory a look as the one we had inside Sheikh Yassin's...
Posted by: Fred || 04/30/2004 10:21 Comments || Top||

#6  Fred - Lol! How are you doing? We've been sorta good, heh...

tipper - I especially enjoy Jihad Spun-Up's 9/11 Theories section.

;-)
Posted by: .com || 04/30/2004 10:28 Comments || Top||

#7  hope your feel well fred. :)
Posted by: muck4doo || 04/30/2004 10:30 Comments || Top||

#8  Looks to me as though the turbans are worried about the recent Al Hurra broadcasts. The last paragraph is a direct statement to that effect.
Posted by: Anonymous4688 || 04/30/2004 10:34 Comments || Top||

#9  Yo, Fred! Welcome back!

I've been so busy lately, I havn't had a chance to sit down and read a book, but I get my fiction fix from stuff like this. And unfortunately, from a lot of what the "mainstream" media puts out, and just about ALL of what the Dems spew.

Not as interesting or believable as a good mystery, but I guess it will have to do.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut || 04/30/2004 10:44 Comments || Top||

#10  Thanx. I'm feeling better, though still on drugs. I'm hoping to be back up to speed by tomorrow or Sunday.
Posted by: Fred || 04/30/2004 10:46 Comments || Top||

#11  Welcome back Fred! Wish you a quick recovery.
Posted by: ed || 04/30/2004 10:50 Comments || Top||

#12  Seventeen guys with Barrett .50s couldn't cover a stairwell?
Posted by: Mike || 04/30/2004 10:58 Comments || Top||

#13  Musta been busy gawking at the 90-foot skeleton of "Adam"...
Posted by: mojo || 04/30/2004 11:14 Comments || Top||

#14  Marines being afraid of close combat?

These jokers never heard of pugils stick training, the bayonet course and the new MCMA being taught in boot camp and retaught on deployment.

(MCMA = Marine Corps Martial Arts)
Posted by: OldSpook || 04/30/2004 12:31 Comments || Top||

#15  I was watching CNN this morning at the gym and almost put my foot through the TV (which would have been a challenge as the toob is mounted about 7 feet in the air). They were getting comments from some old Iraqi men about the mistreatment of the prisoners. The old guys went on about the tragedy at Fallujah and how it was terrorism. Who gives a shit what some old Iraqi fart thinks, and how many said the "mistreatment" looked like Sunday School compared to Saddam's "mistreatment"...which they would never show. ARRRRRGH! I am pissed this morning. I want our guys to get this crap over with. Go in there and kill those bastards. Find the liars at at Jihad Unspun and hang them up by their short hairs. Pull the plug on that Al Jizz lie factory. I AM SICK OF THIS CRAP!

Whew...rant over. Thank you for your time (and bandwidth Fred).
Posted by: remote man || 04/30/2004 12:36 Comments || Top||

#16  RM: Chill, brother. When I feel that way I just imagine the expression that's going to be on Wolf Blizter's face when he announces Bush's re-election in November. "CNN is now declaring that -- aw, hell, I can't believe this! Haven't you people been listening to me? What about the Halliburton contracts? Don't you know that Kerry served in Vietnam?..."
Posted by: Matt || 04/30/2004 13:07 Comments || Top||

#17  Matt, that will be a day that fills me with happiness. It just chaps my fanny that these guys are increasing the risk to our troops. They feel no sense that these are their countrymen. Each time the media whines, more PC fighting rules are placed on our troops. That is getting some of them killed. Makes it hard to chill (my herbal tea is helping somewhat though).
Posted by: remote man || 04/30/2004 13:11 Comments || Top||

#18  17 snipers in same place?! hehe i doubt that ever happened in History!
Posted by: Anonymous4602 || 04/30/2004 14:13 Comments || Top||

#19  Sure, there have been 17 snipers in one place.

I'm thinking it happened in Vegas, during a convention.
Posted by: Robert Crawford || 04/30/2004 14:24 Comments || Top||

#20  Fred, welcome back! The site is humming along well, everything is all cleaned up, -- don't open that closet door. No, do NOT open that closet door, I'm tellin' ya, ...

dang it, you opened it. Ok, all you snipers, all 17 of ya, out, out, OUT!
Posted by: Steve White || 04/30/2004 15:45 Comments || Top||

#21  Fred! Glad to see you back, buddy!
Hope everything went well...We were *pretty good* while you were gone, "Dad."
(Don't suppose you could share those drugs... ? Nevermind. LOL)
Posted by: Jen || 04/30/2004 15:51 Comments || Top||

#22  I thought one sniper nailed 17 jihadis on a roof.

AP says 1361 insurgents died in April, 731 in Fallujah.
Posted by: BigEd || 04/30/2004 16:01 Comments || Top||

#23  Looks like Baghdad Bob came out of retirement. Those folks in Vancouver must sit around, drink coffee and dream up this S**t.
Posted by: GK || 04/30/2004 16:44 Comments || Top||

#24  Hiya Mr. P. heal up quick, we can't keep the war paused forever.
Posted by: Shipman || 04/30/2004 17:15 Comments || Top||


'Al-Qaeda' denies Jordan WMD plot
Allegations that al-Qaeda was planning a chemical attack against Jordan have been denied in a new audio message. But a voice said to be Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a senior member of the group, does say an assault was considered on Jordan's intelligence headquarters. The tape was broadcast on the internet and Arabic television four days after Jordan said it had uncovered a chemical terror plot against targets in Amman. Washington accuses Mr Zarqawi of being behind terrorist bombings in Iraq.
Zarqawi seems to be regional director/commander of Middle East and European operations.

"[Reports] that there was a chemical bomb to kill thousands of people is a mere lie," the taped voice says. "If we had such a bomb - and we ask God that we have such a bomb soon - we would not hesitate for a moment to strike Israeli towns, such as Eilat, Tel Aviv and others."
The voice says the Jordanian authorities fabricated the story in order to create a smokescreen to hide "the sordid face of the Jordanian intelligence services". He said the bomb was intended was made of primary substances available on the market - but it was intended not to harm ordinary people but to destroy the "Jordanian Mossad", referring to Israel's spy service.
So you're admitting there was a bomb, most likely enhanced with chemicals.

"The Jordanian intelligence lied twice... to protect their masters and sponsors from the Jews and Christians," the voice says.
Correspondents say there is no way to verify the authenticity of the tape, which was made available on al-Minbar website.
Most likely it was him, he didn't like the press he was getting on this planned attack.

On Thursday, Queen Rania joined thousands of Jordanians in a mass street protest against the alleged plot. The protest was said to be the largest in recent history, attracting tribal, religious and business leaders and political activists. Reports of the size of the match varied markedly, from conservative estimates of 20,000 to 80,000 according to Queen Rania's office, to 250,000 according to the Jordanian news agency, Petra.
Jordanian TV reported on Monday that the authorities had uncovered the chemical plot and raided the house from which the alleged al-Qaeda cell was operating on 20 April. During the raid, four people were killed and six others were arrested. They included Azmi al-Jayusi, who was shown on TV confessing to the plot.
Officials said the plot involved attacking the intelligence department in Amman, using trucks loaded with 20 metric tons of chemicals.
Which Zarqawi admitted was a target.

The attack could have killed 80,000 people and injured twice that amount in an area of two square kilometres (a square mile), officials said.
Have to take that estimate with a large load of salt. They had bought a large amount of acid and other chemicals and piled them on top of explosives. Many would have been killed and injured, but doubt 80K.

Other possible targets included the US embassy and the prime minister's office, although officials did not provide details on these alleged plots.
Posted by: Steve || 04/30/2004 9:34:04 AM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:


WaPo on possible Fallujah deal
More on how and if this will go down; the rest chopped. A bit long anyway, sorry.
The surprise agreement in Fallujah, which was authorized by Marine Lt. Gen. James T. Conway, is intended to give more responsibility to Iraqis for subduing the city while attempting defuse tensions by pulling Marines back from front-line positions. But some U.S. military and civilian officials privately expressed concern that Conway's strategy involves too hasty a retreat and relies too heavily on Iraqis whose combat skills and allegiances have not been fully examined.
Yup.
It is not clear whether Conway conveyed the terms of the deal to his superiors in Baghdad and at the Pentagon, or even to leaders of the U.S. occupation authority. One person familiar with the deal said it took senior U.S. military and civilian officials in Baghdad by surprise. Because of the apparent lack of consultation, some officials said elements of the agreement, particularly the speedy troop withdrawal, may be tempered by the Pentagon or by the U.S. Central Command.
There has to be a sane person somewhere.
"It's very confusing right now," a senior Pentagon official said. "There's a disconnect here and we can't figure it out." The Pentagon's chief spokesman, Larry DiRita, said Marine commanders have considerable authority to negotiate deals within certain "broad objectives," including bringing to justice those Iraqis responsible for the killing and mutilation in Fallujah of four civilian U.S. security contractors. The objectives involve ensuring that Fallujah is not "left in the hands of the former regime elements and whoever else" is in league with them.
Makes sense. Now here's the kicker:
Under the deal, Marine battalions stationed in and around Fallujah will begin pulling away from the city over the next several days. In addition to giving up front-line positions inside Fallujah -- some of which were gained only after Marines suffered significant casualties during fighting this month -- the Marines also will lift their cordon around the city of 200,000.
!!!
Ahmed Hardan, a physician who led a group of Fallujah residents in earlier negotiations with U.S. forces, said on the al-Arabiya that the latest deal calls for U.S. troops to move out of the city's southern neighborhoods by early Saturday and to leave the northern part of Fallujah (where the baddies are) beginning Sunday.
Of course, everything you hear on al-Arabiya is true...
The Fallujah Protection Army will be subordinate to the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force and report directly to Conway. The deal also could exploit any divisions among Sunni insurgents in the city, which appear to be growing, according to Marine officers.
Having them shoot each other would be nice. But we should still stick around and shoot whomever's left.
Posted by: someone || 04/30/2004 3:28:58 AM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  IMHO, its way too soon to say what this means. 48 hours wont be adequate.

Several questions
1. Was this really all done by Gen. Conway, as is being reported. He didnt get ANY signoff form Bremer, let alone from Washington? Despite previous indications that Bush was following the situation in Fallujah personally???
2. The press has reported USMC promises to withdraw? What, if anything, did the local tribal sheiks et al promise in return?
3. Who does Conway think the insurgents are? Are they mainly fedayeen Saddam and foreigners, who will fight to the bitter end, and make life hell for the FPA, or try to turn the FPA? Or are they local unemployed, thugs, etc who can be bought off, and who will "dissolve" Or are they divided as the article above states, and is playing on there divisions really the key here?
4. Who the hell are the FPA? Wretchard reports they are Iraqis being trained in Jordan, with Australian help, and included Shiites and Kurds as well as Sunni Arabs. Other reports indicate many are locals from Fallujah. If we want a reliable force we want one of well trained outsiders, including lots on Shiites and Kurds. OTOH if we want to make nicey nice with the locals we want lots of locals. Presumably the force included both, to achieve both aims. Not clear how this will play out.
5. What are the goals for the FPS and the "cooperative" local notables? While folks here are going to focus on arresting the perps of the bridge outrage, in fact the USMC priorities are likely more on clearing out heavy weapons, and destroying IED/bomb factories. Apparently Fallujah was the Command control and supply center for the insurgency throughout west and central Iraq, and that was why containment was a mistake. Assuming that dealing with that can be accomplished, this may be largely focused on improving the political situation around the country. NYT reports consensus between US and Brahimi on an Iraqi PM, a secular leaning Shiite acceptable to Sistani. And on annex to the Transitional Law that would make clear no further concessions to the Kurds prior to elections - this would win Sistanis support for the transition. It is said a Kurd (!!!!!) will be appointed new head of the Iraqi army. ISTM that the admin is looking for a big WIN on the political front soon (see also the Najaf Shia turning on Sadr) and they are desperate to put Fallujah on the back burner till thats done.

We can always go back in and deal with Fallujah later.

FPA= Fallujah Postponement Army

Posted by: Liberalhawk || 04/30/2004 9:45 Comments || Top||

#2  This policy of negotiation is retarded.

Negotiation only works where there is good faith. If we pull out, they claim a victory of driving us out.

As long as their leadership has a reasonable chance of increasing their power (and surviving) the situation will continue. Furthermore it inspires other opposition leaders.

The best strategy is to alienate the support groups for these people. Having your city leveled is a powerful disinclination.
Posted by: flash91 || 04/30/2004 12:24 Comments || Top||


Fallujah deal imminent?
AP / EFL
U.S. Marines negotiated a plan Thursday to pull back forces from Fallujah, a move that could lift a nearly monthlong siege and allow an Iraqi force led by a former Saddam Hussein-era general to handle security. However, U.S. officials in Washington and Iraq gave somewhat differing accounts on the status of any agreement. A Marine commander in Iraq said a deal was reached but later said "fine points" needed to be fixed. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said there was no deal yet and officials were "still working on it."
Let's not be too hasty.
A force of some 1,100 members called the Fallujah Protective Army would replace the Marine cordon and move into the city as U.S. troops pull back. [It] would be led by a leading general from Saddam's army and include Iraqis with "military experience" from the Fallujah region, Byrne said.
Uh oh.
It could even include gunmen who fought with guerrillas against the Americans particularly ex-soldiers disgruntled over losing their jobs when the United States disbanded the old Iraqi army, another Marine officer said.
Wanted: foxes to guard henhouse.
The new force would not include "hardcore" insurgents or Islamic militants holed up in the city, the officer said.
Well, if they're not "hardcore" that's all right then.
Byrne identified the commander of the new force as Gen. Salah. He said he did not know the generals full name, but Lt. Gen. Salah Abboud al-Jabouri, a native of the Fallujah region, served as governor of Anbar province under Saddam.
Ring any bells?
Marines on the south side of the city began packing up gear Thursday in preparation to withdraw and breaking down earthen berms and other security barriers. But Byrne later said the timing for a pullback was unclear. Washington is under intense international pressure to find a peaceful solution to the standoff that has killed hundreds of Iraqis and became a symbol of anti-U.S. resistance in Iraq, fueling violence that made April the deadliest month for American forces.
We're under "intense international pressure" to do a whole bunch of things, all of which are grossly contrary to our interests. I understand the desire to Iraqify the battle, but if this handover includes the NW section where we have the jihadis cornered, then it has the makings of disaster. If this "Fallujah Protective Army" isn't 100% reliable and viciously thorough, then the jihadis will have a golden opportunity to declare victory--and I'm sure they'll use it. If Washington doesn't intervene I fear this may turn out to be the weekend we lost the war.
Posted by: someone || 04/30/2004 3:16:15 AM || Comments || Link || [1 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Well, I figure it's like a few years ago when Powell went to visit Arafart in his garage. At the time, I was mighty pi$$ed. It was right after a terrible suicide attack and it seemed then that we were rewarding terror, caving, showimg how weak we were, and so on. Look, the Marines and their 10+ to 1 kill ratio aren't going far and there's still going to be plenty of recon going on (Predator, etc...). This is going to be a test.
Posted by: John G || 04/30/2004 9:21 Comments || Top||

#2  I think someone's comment regards which part of Fallujah might (empasis: might) be planned for turnover to Iraqis is important. Read Wretchard's posts of today & (particularly) yesterday and picture the SE Industrial area of Fallujah, and it might make sense. Regards the Golan section, only joint actions might make sense.

If there is any truth to this endless LLL press speculation (read: Wishful Thinking) of a general disengagement, then I smell the State Dept - and a potentially disastrous change in policy.

We are doing it right. Puhfuckingleeze ignore the dipshits and fools who do not and never will understand either war nor Arabs.
Posted by: .com || 04/30/2004 9:31 Comments || Top||

#3  IMHO... You're just going to end up back in there fighting the Fundies backed up by an extra thousand Iraqi troops. As soon as the Iraqis get in there the fundies will put them under the Islamo-hypno ray and bingo they'll be shooting at the Marines again... Election year or not, if this situation occurs- paint an arclight box over the Golan neighbourhood and show them some real hellfire. The fuss will die down in a year or two.

It may have been said before but it's awfully funny how the number of large bombings has fallen since Fallujah has been surrounded.
Posted by: Howard UK || 04/30/2004 9:59 Comments || Top||

#4  It may have been said before but it's awfully funny how the number of large bombings has fallen since Fallujah has been surrounded.

which is why its hard to believe that some kind of cordon wont be maintained. But looking at the Israeli experience in the territories, there are cordons and there are cordons. Withdrawing from the center city while maintaining checkpoints around the city is virtually SOP for the IDF. Its VERY hard to believe that something like that wont be in effect here, despite the reports.
Posted by: Liberalhawk || 04/30/2004 10:05 Comments || Top||

#5  This is a big mistake. First they Al-J will spin this as a 'win' for the fundies (and I am not sure it isn't) and we are just arming 1,100 more of the enemy...

Will they even need to give up the people responsible for the 4 contractors? Hello??? Remember them???
Posted by: CrazyFool || 04/30/2004 10:19 Comments || Top||

#6  Stratfor says this is an attempt to put pressure on Sistani "see, we CAN work with the Sunnis, if you leave us no choice" Wheels within wheels. Wait and see.
Posted by: Liberalhawk || 04/30/2004 10:53 Comments || Top||

#7  Reuters - U.S. Marines will maintain some positions in and around Falluja as an Iraqi battalion takes over the restive town, a Marines statement said Friday.

"Until the battalion's units demonstrate a capability to man designated checkpoints and positions, Marines will continue to maintain a presence in and around Falluja," the statement said.


"The coalition objectives remain unchanged -- to eliminate armed groups, collect and positively control all heavy weapons and turn over foreign fighters and disarm anti-Iraqi insurgents in Falluja."

A former general in Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard said Friday he was forming a new force with U.S. agreement to restore stability to the town, but fresh clashes showed that a month of fighting with Sunni Muslim insurgents was not over.


The statement from the Marines said the new Iraqi force would help track down those who killed four American contractors on March 31 and the people who mutilated their bodies, the incident which led to the Marine siege.


The Iraqi force would also help find those who overran Falluja's police station, killed more than 20 policemen and freed prisoners in February, it said.

Once found, those responsible would be tried in Iraqi courts, it said.
Posted by: Liberalhawk || 04/30/2004 11:26 Comments || Top||

#8  Once found, those responsible would be tried in Iraqi courts, it said.

Kinda hard to try a guy with a hole in his stomach and missing half his head.
Posted by: Charles || 04/30/2004 12:15 Comments || Top||

#9  The only way we know that the Fundi's aren't going to attack us again is to kill them now. They are not going to be "turned". We have to complete this job now. If Iraqi's under our supervision can take some of the duties in the quiet sectors of the city, fine. If the cordon starts to weaken or we see one ounce of complicity between those forces and the Fundi's, then we bring in the B-1's and B-52's. Flatten the Fallujah and start over in about 20 years.
Posted by: remote man || 04/30/2004 13:07 Comments || Top||

#10  If we flatten Fallujah from the air, the whole country will rise (except for the Kurds). We'd need about 600,000 troops on the ground to control that. Which we dont got available. Unless youre planning to level Baghdad as well?

Look, it may not make sense to you and me that folks from Baghdad to Basra who dont care to actively support the insurgents, would do so if we pounded Fallujah to bits, but thats the way folks are. When the Soviets went into Afghanistan, the original opposition was fairly limited. Then, in an attempt to crush the opposition, they killed a huge bunch of people in Herat. After that the thing flared out of control, and they never got it back under control.
Posted by: Liberalhawk || 04/30/2004 16:01 Comments || Top||


Israel-Palestine
Al Qaeda Terror Ring Draws Closer to Israel
Posted by: Mark Espinola || 04/30/2004 03:22 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:


Israel: Bio-Chem-Explosive’ Remote Detector Invented
Haaretz Daily,
April 30, 2004

International Technologies Lasers (ITL), which is based in Rishon Letzion, has developed a device that can analyze and identify chemical elements by remote laser sensing harmless to the eyes and body.

The significance is that for the first time cars and people may be scanned from several meters away to detect explosives, drugs or other illegal materials.

The security establishment is showing a keen interest in the new device, and ITL is expected to sign a contract with the Public Security Ministry in the near future. Several branches of the United States security forces have also examined the device and are enthusiastic about its performance...
Hmmm...Laser identification of materials, by remote telemetry. That would require applying X-ray technology to spectro-analysis. X-Ray-Laser synthesis could have implications in satellite technology. And, if lasers can detect weaponry, they could also be used to neutralize bio-chem agents by altering their chemistry. I am also impressed by the low investment cost factor.

Posted by: Man Bites Dog || 04/30/2004 2:48:44 AM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  You have to be careful with these reports in order to avoid being taken in by dis-information. Having said that when I flew in Australia a couple of months back, a man stuck a probe into my carry on and told me it could detect any contact by any of my clothes to explosives going back years.
Posted by: Phil B || 04/30/2004 9:52 Comments || Top||

#2  careful not to drag your luggage across the lawn - especially if you've recently fertilized it ;-)
Posted by: Frank G || 04/30/2004 10:07 Comments || Top||

#3  A dividend from years of DeathRay(TM) research!

Bravo!
Posted by: eLarson || 04/30/2004 11:48 Comments || Top||

#4  Laser remote sensing operates by analyzing the spectrum of light reflected back from the air illuminated by the laser. No X-rays involved. US military has similar sensors for remote detection of chem and bio weapon aerosol clouds.
Posted by: Hammer of the Moors || 04/30/2004 14:59 Comments || Top||

#5  Hammer would you please start pushing 'em into the sea again?
Posted by: Shamu || 04/30/2004 17:18 Comments || Top||


Afghanistan/South Asia
Qazi appoints 4 more deputies
Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) Ameer Sauron Qazi Hussain Ahmad on Thursday appointed four new naib ameers (Nazgul deputies), raising their number to nine. The new deputies are Hafiz Muhammad Idress for Gondor Punjab, Asad Ullah Bhutto for Shire Sindh, Professor Muhammad Ibrahim for Mirkwood NWFP and Maulana Abdul Haq for Rohan Balochistan. All of them are former Kings of men JI provincial heads. Chaudhry Rehmat Elahi, Chaudhry Muhammad Aslam Saleemi, Professor Ghafoor Ahmad, Professor Khursid Ahmad and Liaqat Baloch will continue as shapeless wraiths naib ameers.
Posted by: Paul Moloney || 04/30/2004 3:56:10 AM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Quazi - thanks for the hit list.
Posted by: B || 04/30/2004 4:30 Comments || Top||


Nuggets from the Urdu Press
Declare America terrorist
According to Nawa-e-Waqt, lawyer MD Tahir went to High Court with the writ that Israel and America be declared terrorists and that people be restrained from calling mujahideen terrorists because doing so would completely distort history in Pakistan.

Judge proves his Islamic credentials
According to daily Insaf, a Christian named Williams who worked in a hospital took home an unclaimed baby - whose mother had died - with the intention of bringing him up. A group of Muslims went to court protesting that a Christian could not bring up a Muslim child. To his great credit and blessing, the judge handed down the verdict that Williams should give the baby back to the hospital although the child was without parents.

UK Muslims don’t study
According to Jang, Pakistanis in the UK were the only community with a bad record in education. School-going children spent more time away from school when they should be attending classes. According to an official report, Pakistani children spent 40 percent of the school-term absenting themselves from school. This was put down to the parents taking them to Pakistan. After each vacation the children took time returning to school. Most of the Pakistani parents belonged to villages in Pakistan and put little value on education.

Women released on blood-money
According to Nawa-e-Waqt, two women in Lahore’s Kot Lakhpat jail were released after payment of blood-money (Rs 2.7 lakh) from her own pocket by chief minister’s adviser Dr Faiza Asghar. Many women had completed their sentence but were not released because no one paid their blood money agreed between the accused and the family of the dead person. It was revealed that countless such cases were pending in jails and that there were 7,000 women in jails, 40 percent of them along with their children.

Lincoln was a Muslim!
Great columnist Haroonur Rashid stated in Jang that American president Abraham Lincoln was secretly a Muslim and was suspect in the eyes of many Americans. Lincoln was in the mould because he gave freedom to countless blacks in America. He was perhaps killed because he was a Muslim.
Posted by: Paul Moloney || 04/30/2004 3:48:33 AM || Comments || Link || [1 views] Top|| File under:

#1  rofl, I just luv the last one, I would never have guessed
Posted by: Igs || 04/30/2004 3:59 Comments || Top||

#2  Clinton was also suspect because he didn't act monogamous.
Posted by: Mike Sylwester || 04/30/2004 6:36 Comments || Top||

#3  Wow. Lol! From first to last: boggling.

Methinks it's all about bubbles - and no, not the Liberace kind - the common life experience / paradigm kind. It is my habit to pose this question to myself: "How did he / she arrive at the place where this makes sense?" in order to formulate some semblance of a rational response. Whew, wotta collection!

Putting one's self in the shoes of those who penned these nuggets, and who obviously did so without any sense of their impact or rationality outside of the bubble of the PakiWakiLand mindset, is frequently (to my chagrin) beyond my ken. Amazing stuff.

In this case, the Venn diagram has no intersections.

Reminds me of just how important the bubble we each inhabit really is in shaping our responses - and how we are constantly talking past each other, at cross-purposes, due to the lack of a common paradigm. Sigh.

Thx, Paul!
Posted by: .com || 04/30/2004 8:31 Comments || Top||

#4  sadly, most of the American public will never hear about these types of things so that they can get a better grasp on what the WOT is really all about.

We need to do a better job on the propaganda war at home.
Posted by: B || 04/30/2004 10:06 Comments || Top||

#5  Judge proves his Islamic credentials
According to daily Insaf, a Christian named Williams who worked in a hospital took home an unclaimed baby - whose mother had died - with the intention of bringing him up. A group of Muslims went to court protesting that a Christian could not bring up a Muslim child. To his great credit and blessing, the judge handed down the verdict that Williams should give the baby back to the hospital although the child was without parents.


But haven't I heard stories in this country about some organization called "The Association of African-American Social Workers" trying to do anything possible to prevent white parents from adopting a black kid, even if there are no available black parents? It seems to me there was a case where this group went way over the line, and a white couple won a law suit. Los Angeles County Social Services had to pay them $200,000 settlement for the interference, and the Judge also granted them the adoption of the black child they had fostered for 5 years.
Posted by: BigEd || 04/30/2004 11:18 Comments || Top||

#6  It happens BigEd. Better a black/hispanic orphan wait till he/she 17 and be on their own than to be adopted by tools of the system. He/she will then have more in common with their cohorts. HeyZeus is that stupid or what.
Posted by: Shipman || 04/30/2004 16:46 Comments || Top||

#7  Although was not a Muslim, Lincoln may very well have been a Melungeon, decendents of Turks shipwrecked in America in the 1600's who interbred with Indians and slaves and became hillbillies. Present day Melungeons claim him as one of them. Some known Melungeons are Elvis and Ava Gardner. If Lincoln was a Melungeon then our greatest president could have been 2 or 3 generations removed from Islam.
Posted by: Anonymous4694 || 04/30/2004 20:02 Comments || Top||

#8  That crazy Licoln was a Jew He held up the Emancipation Proclamation ten years, he is just like every other oppressor, and he was met with oppression.
Posted by: Anonymous6089 || 08/16/2004 14:08 Comments || Top||

#9  A week without "nuggets from the Urdu press" is a week without sunshine...but no dhinga-mushti this week. Drat.
Posted by: Seafarious || 08/16/2004 14:26 Comments || Top||


Tribesmen want end to FATA system
In the hullabaloo about tribal militancy and military operation in South Waziristan, one point has been completely ignored. The deal struck between the army and the militant tribesmen means there is no possibility in the near future of a reform in FATA (Federally Administered Tribal Areas). Predictably, the deal has drawn flak from the diplomatic community in Islamabad. It has also raised eyebrows among the US diplomats and certainly back in Washington. But the real problem relates to the anachronism about retaining the decrepit system in FATA.

From a distance the system may appear benign and accommodating. In reality, it is not. Even so, it has governed the lives of some 8 million predominantly poor and ignorant ethnic Pashtuns in Pakistan’s tribal region. It has retarded progress, intellectual as well as political, and has bred violence, radicalism and intransigence, often under the cover of Pashtoonwalli, a mix of tribal tradition and Islamic fraternity. The system was crafted by the British colonial rulers in the 1880s after they struck a deal with the tribes straddling the region that separates Pakistan from Afghanistan. It was a result of repeated inconclusive attempts to tame the dozens of wild Pashtun tribes. Essentially a quid pro quo, the British allowed these people to continue to live their lives as usual – gunrunning, drug trafficking and hosting fugitives from the law. In return, the colonial power extracted the right to control the major roads leading up to the Durand Line. The British also divided the frontier into seven semi-autonomous regions, with each area identified as an Agency. Each Agency was administratively looked after by a central government official, called a Political Agent (PA), aided by an army of low-ranking officials and a paramilitary force drawn from the tribes. Now, more than a century later, this system is still in place, and in the eyes of some has been quite successful. While under the control and jurisdiction of the central government, each Pashtun tribe has its own representative spokesman and each tribe is ensured of its own autonomy. But the truth is that very few locals see it that way.

Riven with poverty, ignorance and devoid largely of even the basic infrastructure, the FATA region is run by seven PA s – who are armed with two tools of influence: a set of laws called the Frontier Crimes Regulations (FCR) and the authority and ability to align certain tribal elders by rewarding them with leadership status, known as Malik. The FCR allows the PA to imprison or impose penalties worth thousands of dollars on anybody he thinks has violated the law or endangered the peace of the region. Entire tribes can even be held responsible, and thus penalised, for crimes and offences carried out by one individual. Currently, some 35,000 Maliks represent the entire populace of the seven Agencies and are often viewed as the stooges of the PA and the government. The NWFP governor Iftikhar Hussein, during a recent meeting in Peshawar, in fact eulogised the Maliks as ‘our hands and feet’. Some Maliks have even been accused of sheltering Al Qaeda and Taliban fugitives, many of whom came to seek refuge in different parts of FATA after the fall of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in late 2001.

“The un-audited budget and the income from illegal trade through and from Afghanistan is immense, and most of the trade and authority is still in the hands of the political agent and the Maliks,” said Marezullah, a resident of Wana. “Who would like to forego these colossal amounts of money,” he quipped. Anwar likens the combination of the PA and the Malik to a mafia that controls trade, construction and development business, and the funds meant for development. “If the system goes, they would also lose their huge incomes,” Anwar argued. “Perhaps the international war against terrorism offers a glimmer hope for change in the region,” Afrasiab Khattak hopes.
Posted by: Paul Moloney || 04/30/2004 3:42:53 AM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:


Israel-Palestine
Latest installment in world’s longest running soap
A meeting of the PLO executive committee and heads of all Palestinian factions at Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat’s compound in Ramallah on Wednesday night was not attended by Hamas and Islamic Jihad representatives, a Palestinian official said.

"They probably stayed away fearing an Israeli assassination attempt," one PA source said, adding that all Hamas leaders have gone into hiding since the IDF killed Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and Abdel Aziz Rantisi.

Arafat called the meeting to discuss national unity and give the factions access to the decision-making process, a PA official stated. "Arafat has been inviting them in past weeks to show goodwill and let them listen. So far they do not have voting power," Bassam Abu Sharif, an adviser to Arafat, said. Hamas has demanded a greater role in decision-making. The movement asked the PA to include its members in the security forces, but the PA has so far refused.

Fatah has invited Hamas to join the PLO, but Hamas is reluctant, since it would be a minority without enough power to change policies, one senior official explained.

The factions and executive committee discussed the Gaza withdrawal and what position the PA should take.

"Should Israel withdraw only partially from Gaza and refuse to coordinate the withdrawal with the Palestinians, the PA will not take security responsibility in Gaza. They will only offer services," Gaza legislator Ziad Abu Amr said.
Arafat does not care whether the PA can control Gaza unless Israel releases him from the Mukata, one Palestinian official charged. Arafat fears that former Palestinian prime minister Mahmoud Abbas and security chief Muhammad Dahlan will profit from a Gaza withdrawal and grow stronger.

The Egyptians have urged Arafat to move to the Gaza Strip and make sure the PA remains in control. If that happens, Arafat will need an agreement with Hamas and Islamic Jihad to make sure the PA will not find itself less powerful than Hamas and unable to function. Arafat, who does not want to clash with Islamic militants, therefore wants an agreement on the policies, laws, and power sharing with Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
Posted by: Phil B || 04/30/2004 2:56:59 AM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Need.....more....Popcorn........
Posted by: Evert V. in NL || 04/30/2004 6:21 Comments || Top||

#2  I wonder if the pull-out is a calculated move by the Israelites to get rid of Arafat. There is already some minimal fighting in Gaza over who will be in control and it may be Hamas is pissed off enough at Arafat that he may be eliminated. Maybe that's why he won't move to Gaza. If they Palestinians are fighting each other that might give Israel a breather.
Posted by: Deacon Blues || 04/30/2004 7:57 Comments || Top||

#3  Arafat fears that former Palestinian prime minister Mahmoud Abbas and security chief Muhammad Dahlan will profit from a Gaza withdrawal and grow stronger.

I think thats the plan.
Posted by: Liberalhawk || 04/30/2004 9:54 Comments || Top||

#4  "Should Israel withdraw only partially from Gaza and refuse to coordinate the withdrawal with the Palestinians,.."

These guys are a bunch of deluded idiots. The Palestinians haven't lived up to much of their obligations and promises up to this point, so why should the Israelis be expected to "coordinate" their withdrawal?? I'd much rather that the IDF soldiers at the back covering the rear give the Palestinians watching them go a collective middle finger salute.

"..the PA will not take security responsibility in Gaza. They will only offer services," Gaza legislator Ziad Abu Amr said.

WTF should anyone aside from Palestinians give a rat's ass about Palestinian security??? If they want to eat their own, fine, GO FOR IT.
Posted by: Bomb-a-rama || 04/30/2004 11:25 Comments || Top||


Iraq-Jordan
US general suspended over abuse
A US general has been suspended in Iraq over the alleged abuse of prisoners by US troops in jails she ran. Brigadier General Janice Karpinski is among seven officers being investigated following claims that soldiers under their command mistreated detainees.

The army confirmed the suspension after US television broadcast images of US soldiers allegedly abusing inmates at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad. CBS TV says it has "dozens" of pictures showing a wide range of maltreatment. Taken by US troops, many of the pictures show American troops watching in apparent approval.
This is not good.
The army announced last month that 17 soldiers had been suspended over the allegations of abuse of prisoners. Six of them - military police - are facing court martial.

CBS said an army investigation had concluded that Gen Karpinski's "lack of leadership and clear standards" led to problems in Abu Ghraib and three other prisons for which she was responsible. The army has made no formal charges against her. She is the subject of an investigation that could result in a written reprimand, AFP news agency reported.
This general is toast; she lost control of her unit.
Brig Gen Mark Kimmitt told CBS the army was "appalled" by the behaviour of its soldiers. Gen Kimmitt, the deputy head of coalition forces in Iraq, said the suspected abusers "let their fellow soldiers down". But, he said, the few suspects were "not representative of the 150,000 soldiers that are over here... Don't judge your army based on the actions of a few," he urged Americans.

The prison where the abuses are alleged to have taken place was a notorious torture centre during the Saddam Hussein era. Bob Baer, a former CIA operative with extensive Iraq experience, told CBS: "If there [was] ever a reason to get rid of Saddam Hussein, it's Abu Ghraib [prison]."
That's one reason, yep.
Posted by: Steve White || 04/30/2004 1:27:12 AM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Bad apples in every army:

It would appear, though, that soldiers don't always make good jailers. Atrocities by Canadian soldiers in Somalia who tortured and killed a prisoner, led to the disbandment of the Canadian Airborne Regiment in the 1990s. Italian troops in Somalia also abused prisoners.
The British army is also investigating the torture and murder of Iraqi prisoners. Like the Americans, the British are stressing it was the acts of individual soldiers.

Source: cbc.ca
Posted by: Rafael || 04/30/2004 3:52 Comments || Top||

#2  Imagine the Middle Eastern Press take on this. This is what they were waiting for to "prove" how twisted and inhumane Americans are. Never mind that these atrocities are a pinic compare to what they do to common prisoners or their servants here.
Posted by: Anonymous4617 || 04/30/2004 4:07 Comments || Top||

#3  Anon: the Middle East "press" means nothing any more. What else can they say that they haven't already? They're part of the enemy agit-prop machine...as was 60 minutes for doing this story.

You know what really worries me though: that 60 minutes will get what they really want. A US defeat...a defeat that will doom our children and grandchildren, who will one day curse us for collapsing...if we collapse.
Posted by: RMcLeod || 04/30/2004 4:34 Comments || Top||

#4  In warfare, abuses commonly develop when an army quickly captures many more enemies than it can feed, house, guard and control. The army personnel assigned to this task are overwhelmed, confused and even panicked.

These guards were foolish and obviously did not receive adequate guidance and supervision from their superiors. Keep in mind, though, that those superiors were overwhelmed too, maybe most of all.

I suspect also that the interrogation system was in disarray. I saw the 60 Minutes show, and one of the accused guards mentioned that there were interrogators from the CIA, FBI, Services and various other secret organizations (?). It sounds like a mess where a few ambitious cowboys could experiment with their own creative interrogation ideas could run riot.

By the way, this revelations ought to prompt a serious examination of the incredible claims -- masturbating prostitutes, etc. -- made by prisoners released from Guatanamo. There really might be some very bad apples among our interrogators.
Posted by: Mike Sylwester || 04/30/2004 7:15 Comments || Top||

#5  So far I haven't seen anything worse than the average fraternity rush. I guess they didn't get any pictures of the "elephant walk" or the pledges having to pick up olives with their butt cheeks off of a block of ice.
Posted by: Eric || 04/30/2004 8:28 Comments || Top||

#6  Mike S, this report supports your view.
Posted by: Phil B || 04/30/2004 8:35 Comments || Top||

#7  "This general is toast; she lost control of her unit."

She might as well resign,her carrer is over.
Posted by: raptor || 04/30/2004 8:37 Comments || Top||

#8  I've seen the pictures and they were sickening;I can hardly imagine how the Iraqis will react when they see'em.
Posted by: El Id || 04/30/2004 9:34 Comments || Top||

#9  By the way, this revelations ought to prompt a serious examination of the incredible claims -- masturbating prostitutes, etc. -- made by prisoners released from Guatanamo.

Guantanamo is accessible only by sea and air; on three sides is the openly hostile country of Cuba. The only flights in are either military or military charter; I suspect the only ships in and out are military. You can bet that any civilian craft approaching Gitmo are boarded and searched or just turned away; I suspect we're rather concerned with terrorist interest in the base.

So just where the hell did those "prostitutes" come from?
Posted by: Robert Crawford || 04/30/2004 9:47 Comments || Top||

#10  I don't really have any problem with our men using robust techniques to interrogate prisoners in order to obtain information that could save lives. The interesting fact is that pictures were allowed to be taken. The next time someone decides to take pictures, the guy should be strung up from the nearest lamppost.
Posted by: Zhang Fei || 04/30/2004 9:54 Comments || Top||

#11  ElId - Wotta load of BS. From which paradigm are you speaking? Westerner or Arab? The difference is significant, as you know, and as everyone should keep in mind.

Everyone involved knew, inherently - thanks to our social ruleset, that they were out of bounds. They'll definitely get theirs - as we obviously do our laundry in public - no?

If only the same was true of Izzoids who perpetrate far more heinous acts, we would be dealing with issues from within the same paradigm. That is not the case, as you should keep in mind. Yesterday's interminable thread on this proved, yet again, how important it is to clarify the paradigm from which remarks originate. 90% of it was at cross-purposes and pointless. The perps and their superiors knew better and they will get their just desserts, something demonstrably untrue in almost any other similar circumstance you can name. It doesn't mean shit in the long run (read: beyond those not directly involved) except to fools. That's it, from the Western non-idiotarian POV.

If the Arab "world" wants to go apeshit, so what? They've been apeshit for a long long time. We'll deal with our own - and them. The Izzoids execute a helpless Italian captive and you equate it with this - at least emotionally. Death vs. Humiliation. Moral equivalency gone mad. Fuck that noise and get a grip. Are you "seething" for us? Want to spell out what you think this response will be and explain your reasoning? I would find that fascinatingly revealing.
Posted by: .com || 04/30/2004 10:01 Comments || Top||

#12  .com: ElId - Wotta load of BS. From which paradigm are you speaking? Westerner or Arab? The difference is significant, as you know, and as everyone should keep in mind.

My sentiments exactly. Muslims are making out like humiliation is the ultimate no-no in the treatment of Muslim prisoners. Well, Muslim jihadis humiliate our prisoners, torture them slowly, kill them and then mutilate their bodies. I don't have any problem with humiliating or beating jihadis for information.
Posted by: Zhang Fei || 04/30/2004 10:28 Comments || Top||

#13  What disturbs me is that the leading perps, the six who are being court-martialed, are from a reserve MP unit.
This means a high probability that several, perhaps all, are involved in law enforcement or prison work in civilian life.
Does anyone have any info on their respective backgrounds?
What about Karpinski herself? Is she regular or reserve? Anyone know about her career background?
If we have a cross-section of civilian correctional types involved in this, the scandal may get a lot bigger.
Posted by: Atomic Conspiracy || 04/30/2004 10:37 Comments || Top||

#14  ZF - Just a few minutes on ol' reliable, Jihad Spun-Up, tells us all we need to know, heh, and clarifies the point for even the terminally lame! Grrrr! The time is long past for discarding the gloves and our interminable attempts to "understand" that which is so barbaric as to be inhuman. Geee! I guess in that sentence I've just exposed myself for a simultaneous redneck and bleeding heart liberal! Go figure, eh? Lol!
;-)
Posted by: .com || 04/30/2004 10:37 Comments || Top||

#15  Hello! - Soldiers make lousy cops, they ain't trained for that. That's precisely why the US has the Posse Commitatus act.

As Ron Perleman observed:
"Hey, I mostly just hurt people!"
Posted by: mojo || 04/30/2004 11:20 Comments || Top||

#16  I found an answer on the background of these guys. Most are correctional officers in Maryland and Virginia:
"We are relying heavily on our soldiers with correctional [officer] experience," said their newsletter, published in the local newspaper. "The regular Army can't touch us with experience."

But months later, the prison detail was disgraced in news reports across the world.

The Army said yesterday that 14 of the 17 soldiers implicated in an investigation of abuse of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison are from the 372nd. They face either criminal or administrative charges.

Damn. Just damn. No, hell and damn.

Posted by: Atomic Conspiracy || 04/30/2004 11:49 Comments || Top||

#17  AC - one of the reservists is a guard back in VA. Said he wasn't trained to do pow work and there were no geneva guidelines to follow - blaming everything on his command essentially. I don't buy it, sounds like him and the others were prolly bored and frustrated and made some real bad calls. IMHO, this shit is just frat stuff, I have a sick mind & think it's fucking funny as hell though. However, it was also pretty stupid, a SNCO or Officer should've stepped up and told the lads to knock off the tom foolery. I can understand how this happens though wouldn't have allowed this in my command. They're especially stupid for taking pictures (if those are indeed legit) and will be punished accordingly. Move along people, nothing to see here.
Posted by: Jarhead || 04/30/2004 11:52 Comments || Top||

#18  It's amazing that an MP would plead ignorance of the Geneva guidelines or routine procedure.
I think we are seeing a My Lai style defense here, transferring the blame to the command structure in the hope of obscuring the defendant's personal guilt behind a political smokescreen.
Guilt does appear to go pretty high up the chain here (as it did at My Lai) but that doesn't get the low-level perps off the hook.
Any soldier, let alone an MP with correctional experience, should know better than this.
I spent 30 years in the military, active and reserve, enlisted at E-1 and retired at O-5.
These sad-sacks would never be able to convince me that they just didn't know any better.

I am still in a state of shock over some of the pictures I saw this morning. WTF were these people thinking about? Could they really have been so ignorant of the consequences if these were published?
Some of our fellow soldiers let us down pretty badly in Vietnam, to say nothing of the leadership (damn them to hell again, anyway).

I thought we were past that, I really did.

Worse, these idiots don't have the excuse of being conscipted to fight in a barbarous and unpopular war that had gone on for years on end.
Posted by: Atomic Conspiracy || 04/30/2004 12:22 Comments || Top||

#19  To save a little bandwidth, a lengthy discussion raged back and forth on the topic yesterday here at Rantburg (Photos show jail abuse by US troops), and I think covered most of the opinions of:
1. those who love our military, are proud of its self-policing disciplinary standards, and think the fallout from this will be minimal or should be ignored; and
2. those who love our military, are proud of its self-policing disciplinary standards, and think the fallout from this will be pretty bad and should be immediately addressed by the POTUS.
Posted by: cingold || 04/30/2004 12:27 Comments || Top||

#20  In other news
Meanwhile, an Iraqi police colonel, Ahmad al-Khazraji, was shot dead Thursday night in downtown Baghdad, the U.S. command said Friday. The body of a Baghdad area council member was found hung with a sign on his chest that said "al-Mahdi Army business," a reference to al-Sadr's militia

Lets not forget
1. The horrors the "insurgents" are perpetrating.
2. The courage of the Iraqis, like these two, who are cooperating with the Coalition to rebuild their country
Posted by: Liberalhawk || 04/30/2004 12:52 Comments || Top||

#21  I think most of us are on the same page generally, but there is disagreement about whether we should care what effect these photos will have on the perception of the US and its military among arabs and the rest of the world. Some people say, "who gives a damn what they think, they hate us anyway." Its true that they hate us anyway, and rant and rave without justification against us. Other people are totally concerned about how the rest of the world percieves us and don't want to do anything without the UN's approval. This attitude would neuter the US and prevent us from protecting our own interests. I think most people fall somewhere in between: we don't think the world's perception of the US and our military is the most important thing--the ultimate concern, but we recognize that how we are percieved is an important part of the war on terror. There are some hearts and minds that cannot be won. Those hearts and minds need a bullet inserted into them at high velocity. But, in the long term, over the decades to come, it is important that the average arab comes to doubt the atrocious lies that the Al-Qaeda types will continue to spread. We want a middle east that is generally sane (friendly is too much to hope for). If there is a substantial population of sane arabs who don't necessarily like the US, but don't think we are the hateful bullies portrayed in these photos, we are all better off. It is not crazy, or bleeding-heart to be concerned when the enemy gains ammunition in the perception war. I don't want the terrorists to obtain weapons of mass destruction, and these photos will be uses as weapons of mass deception. I'm totally bummed by this whole thing.
Posted by: sludj || 04/30/2004 13:06 Comments || Top||

#22  Be of good cheer, fellas!
President Bush has come out and spoken out strongly about this today:
Bush Feels 'Disgust' at Abuse of Iraqis

Your President has heard your cries, sludj, cingold, Anon1, etc.
Posted by: Jen || 04/30/2004 15:01 Comments || Top||

#23  I imagine that the average Iraqi will scratch their head and wonder that the US gets so upset at what are very miner crimes compared to what Saddam and his thugs pulled off. I think the average Arab will probably think the same thing.

They may play the humiliated Arab card in front of the press, but I have to think that down deep our response that this is bad, etc, etc, does far more good towards our cause than the crimes committed by these bad GIs.
Posted by: Ruprecht || 04/30/2004 16:21 Comments || Top||

#24  They are so used to being lied to by their govts, Al Jazeera, Al Arabiya, etc, how seriously do you think that the Arabs will take this? A few in the English speaking elites will have access to CNN and will be able to ascertain that it's a true story. The rest? How will they be able to tell it from any other propaganda scam? This will blow over in a few days.
Posted by: 11A5S || 04/30/2004 17:42 Comments || Top||

#25  11A5S: The difference is that this time the Arab press can report that the White House and President have acknowledged that the incident was real. Al Jazeera happily reported that admission by the White House in their english-version website today (I tried to post the link on Rantburg but it didn't show up). I think the President used exactly the right tone though: "disgusted" is a powerful word and conveys the idea that America expects professionalism from its military, expects legal treatment of prisoners of war, and will punish violators severely. That won't erase the damage, but it is the best we can do to limit the extent of damage at this point.
Posted by: sludj || 04/30/2004 19:04 Comments || Top||


Jordan's Queen Joins Thousands in Protest
AMMAN, Jordan (AP) - Jordan's Queen Rania joined thousands of Jordanians in a mass street protest Thursday against a failed plot by an al-Qaida-linked terror cell to launch attacks in the capital, Amman, that officials say would have killed tens of thousands. The queen, wearing a white and orange shirt and blue jeans, held hands with students during the 2-mile march that ended at the parliament building where protesters burned pictures of al-Qaida founder Osama bin-Laden.
Check the pic. Nice.
The protest was the largest in recent history and attracted tribal leaders, businessmen, political activists, Muslim and Christian clerics and students from across the kingdom. Conservative estimates put the crowd figure at 20,000, while Rania's office said 80,000 people joined the march. The official Petra news agency said 250,000 protesters turned out.
The State Ministry for Official Turnouts said 1 million, the King's handlers put it at 2.4 million, pretty much the whole country turned out, you can read about it in the papers.
It followed Monday's airing on state TV of a 20-minute video carrying confessions of suspected terrorists who said they were plotting al-Qaida's first chemical bomb attack in Amman against Jordan's secret service building. Other bombing targets included the U.S. Embassy and the prime minister's office.

The tape caused widespread fear throughout Jordan, a supposedly moderate Arab failed nation that is putatively closely allied to the United States, holds a cold peace treaty with Israel, has a large seething Palestinian population and enjoys relative temporary stability in the volatile forever Middle East. "No for terrorists in Jordan," protesters chanted to the beating of drums.
Any large puppets? Besides the King, I mean.
The queen released a statement saying: "I believe the silent majority has started to speak out against terrorism in a first-of-its-kind demonstration in the Arab and Muslim world on this scale."

When the demonstrators reached parliament, they burned pictures of bin Laden, his alleged Jordanian associate Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of the foiled plot, Azmi al-Jayousi, and his accomplices.
Then they had a cigarette and went home.
Posted by: Steve White || 04/30/2004 12:05:06 AM || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1 
"No for terrorists in Jordan," protesters chanted to the beating of drums.
"But in the U.S. and Israel, no problem."
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut || 04/30/2004 0:23 Comments || Top||

#2  I tend to look at this as good news, for just the simple fact they burned pictures of OBL and Cyclops. I never thought I would see the day that a protest in an Arab country would do such a thing. Hell I have not seen that in the USA or Israel. An anti-terrorist march in the USA might get the ACLU involved and would stop such a thing.
Posted by: Long Hair Republican || 04/30/2004 0:34 Comments || Top||

#3  When the demonstrators reached parliament, they burned pictures of bin Laden. . .

Yeah, the "Arab Street" is opposing the war on terror. They probably confused the pictures of bin-Laden with GWB.

This does not match the Al-Jazzera view of teh Arab world. The Jordanians are "inauthentic" Arabs.
Posted by: BigEd || 04/30/2004 0:55 Comments || Top||

#4  No doubts that her figure with jeans will piss fundamentalists everywhere
Posted by: Anonymous4602 || 04/30/2004 0:56 Comments || Top||

#5 
Jordanian Royal Family
Posted by: BigEd || 04/30/2004 0:59 Comments || Top||

#6  A4602-Did you see her pic before?
Posted by: BigEd || 04/30/2004 1:00 Comments || Top||

#7  Yes, I saw the pic in the article, but the formal one is telling as well.
Posted by: BigEd || 04/30/2004 1:05 Comments || Top||

#8  She is a dish. Funny how the dishes go for a man in a uniform!

AQ could care less. They'll be back!
Posted by: Lucky || 04/30/2004 1:06 Comments || Top||

#9  Statement on Protest on Queen Rania's Website
Posted by: BigEd || 04/30/2004 1:09 Comments || Top||

#10  was there no way they could blame this on the jooos?
Posted by: SON OF TOLUI || 04/30/2004 1:12 Comments || Top||

#11 
The tape caused widespread fear throughout Jordan
Welcome to the real world - one of your religion's making.

Got to check the battery on the sympathy meter - it seems to be stuck at -10.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut || 04/30/2004 2:42 Comments || Top||

#12  They probably confused the pictures of bin-Laden with GWB. This does not match the Al-Jazzera view of teh Arab world.

Not a problem to the plucky AJ. They will just use a little photoshop and viola! those protestors WILL be carrying pictures of GWB.
Posted by: B || 04/30/2004 3:44 Comments || Top||

#13  Statement on Protest on Queen Rania's Website

..participated with thousands of Jordanians in a national public rally pledging allegiance to the country, denouncing all forms of terror..

Somehow, that sounds suspiciously like a veiled reference to Israeli actions against Palestinians. Maybe it's just me, but if the intended terrorist actions had been proclaimed by the suspects to have been directed at someone else other than Jordanians, I doubt this "protest" would have occurred.
Posted by: Bomb-a-rama || 04/30/2004 14:11 Comments || Top||

#14  BigEd, Only formal pics like that one here. But no comparison with the jeans pic that could enrage 70-80% of muslims if it was theirs daughters or wife.
Posted by: Anonymous4602 || 04/30/2004 14:13 Comments || Top||

#15  I think I have a crush on Queen Rania...

Who's that chunky geek she's with ? Some local bellman ?
Posted by: Carl in N.H || 04/30/2004 14:38 Comments || Top||

#16  LOL Carl! Bad! Bad! Racist and Sexist!
Posted by: Shipman || 04/30/2004 17:17 Comments || Top||

#17  very nice, but she's not Grace Kelly....mmmmm
Posted by: Frank G || 04/30/2004 17:29 Comments || Top||

#18  NH Carl - Shipman is correct. Look how Lucky made his point.
Posted by: BigEd || 04/30/2004 17:31 Comments || Top||



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