When we are talking about Ahl Al Sunnah Wal Jamaâah, we are not speaking about Abu Hanifah, nor Imam Maalik, nor Imam Shafiâi, nor Imam Ahmed, we are speaking about the salaf, though, all four imams are from Ahl Al Sunnah Wal Jamaâah.
A Deen is always attributed to Allah (swt)
A Millah is always attributed to a nabi
e.g. Millat Ibrahim (as), Millat Muhammad (saw)
A Firqah (sect) is always attributed to belief matter - Aqeedah
e.g. Ahl ul Sunnah Wal Jamaâah, Muâtazilah (rationalists), Ashâaris, Maturidis, etc.
A Madhab is always attributed to a Juristic scholar
e.g. Hanafi madhab = Abu Hanifah (ra),
Maliki Madhab = Imam Malik (ra),
Shafiâi Madhab = Imam Shafiâi (ra),
Hanbali Madhab = Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal (ra).
Al Uâzaaâie = Imam Al Uâzaaâie,
Al Thawrie - Imam Al Thawrie,
Al Salaamie = Imam Al âIzz ibn Abdul Salaam etc.
A Jamaâah is always attributed to a particular duty or obligation
Got that?
Posted by: Mike Sylwester ||
05/04/2004 12:37:40 ||
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The mastermind of a rampage that killed two Britons and four others in a Saudi Arabian oil town is married to a Briton and belonged to a opposition group in London, officials in the kingdom said today. Muslims in London claimed Scotland Yard has been hunting Mustafa Abdel-Qader Abed al-Ansari for years. He slipped back into Saudi Arabia to lead his brother and two cousins on a bloody rampage, Saudi officials said.
Normally masterminds let someone else do the dying for them.
All four attackers were killed in a shoot-out after an hour-long police chase in which they dragged the body of an American victim from the bumper of their car and urged students at a local high school to travel to Iraq to do battle with the US led occupation forces. An Interior Ministry statement identified the leader of the attack as al-Ansari, a Saudi from the city of Medina who was wanted by security forces. It said al-Ansari left the kingdom in 1994 and joined the London-based Committee for the Defence of the Legitimate Rights, a group of Saudi dissidents who advocate overthrowing the monarchy.
They want direct rule by mullahs, I believe.
âHe re-entered the country in an illegitimate way and infiltrated the borders to carry out despicable plans,â the ministry said. Founders of the Committee for the Defence of the Legitimate Rights said al-Ansari first contacted them in 1994. Mohammed al-Masaari, one of the founders, said al-Ansari came to London at age 22 after spending time with Muslim fighters in Bosnia and Afghanistan.
Gee, will wonders never cease?
He briefly joined the group, which sent him to study English in Cambridge, and married a stupid infidel British woman, he said. But al-Ansari âdisappearedâ in 1997, al-Masaari said. He said he later heard he had been arrested in Yemen. âWe thought that he was still imprisoned in Yemen, or probably in Guantanamo,â al-Masaari said.
Yemen still has that open-door policy for prisons, I see.
"I found him simple, probably naive and lacking in knowledge of politics and Islamic law. He was enthusiastic for holy war and eager to go anywhere to fight ..."
Perfect cannon fodder, er, mastermind material
"...but we told him that we are only active in political and religious matters,â he said.
"No, no, we're peacefull, we don't have anything to do with violence, why we hardly knew him, who are you talking about again?"
Muslim activists in London said Scotland Yard had been pursuing al-Ansari for years and that its agents had questioned many Muslim activists about him.
Posted by: Steve ||
05/04/2004 2:43:30 PM ||
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#1
An apprenticemind, perhaps? I don't think he's going to get his journeyman's or master's rank. And he was the best of his clan, too. A bright future of 4 wives and 50 little head-bobbers cut short. *sniff*
#2
it really pisses me off how muslims do not stand up and speak out agaisnt barbarity of this magnitude..ok you killed the guy in an act terrorism but why drag the body..to any decent halfway civilised person this would be horrible...but you do not hear this from arabs..
if this were to happen in the west the media, un and the arabs would be screaming...
the muslim mentaility is truly warped...as long as the victims are infedels this is ok...
Posted by: Dan ||
05/04/2004 15:34 Comments ||
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the muslim mentaility is truly warped...as long as the victims are infedels this is ok...
No, the real mindset is "as long as the perpetrators are Muslim, it's OK". Compare the Arab world's reaction to Saddams mass graves to their reaction of some minor abuse from US soldiers.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
05/04/2004 16:39 Comments ||
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Dan
In fact their whole society looks at the murder of infidels as a minor offense: the sentence for a crime perpetrated against a non-muslim is halved, there is no death penalty for the murder of a kaffir.
#5
I for one am glad the Muslims have not started in with insincere rants against the barbarity. Its healthy for the west to be exposed to their true feellings on these things. The American street is waking up.
Saudi Arabia says four men who killed five Westerners in a suspected al Qaeda attack on a Saudi energy site were two brothers and their uncles, and one had links to a Saudi dissident group in London. Interior Minister Prince Nayef bin Abdul-Aziz has said he believes Osama bin Ladenâs al Qaeda was behind Saturdayâs attack in the oil and petrochemical hub of Yanbu. .....
The Interior Ministry named the attackers as brothers Sami and Samir al-Ansari and their uncles Ayman and Mustafa, all Saudis. It identified Mustafa as a suspected militant wanted by Saudi authorities who had entered the country illegally after working with well-known Saudi dissident figures abroad. "He last left the country in 1994 to join Saad al-Fagih and Mohamed al-Masâari to work with them in their suspicious committee," it said. "He recently entered the country illegally, crossing the borders in order to carry out vile plans." ....
Fagih and Masâari, two British-based Saudi opposition figures promoting democratic reform in the conservative kingdom, set up the Committee for the Defence of Legitimate Rights (CDLR) in 1993. "This is a desperate and hopeless attempt by the Saudi government to find some link (between us and terrorists), after trying many times and failing," Fagih told Reuters by telephone. "The Saudi government has to decide if it is accusing us, Israel or al Qaeda, and then those accusations can be taken seriously," he said in reference to initial comments by Crown Prince Abdullah blaming "Zionist hands" for the attack. He said someone called Mustafa al-Ansari had frequented the CDLR in 1996, but he did not know if it was the attacker. ...
Posted by: Mike Sylwester ||
05/04/2004 12:13:43 PM ||
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#1
Wheels within squares within triangles... A Freedom-loving AlQ Caliphatist Neo-Zionist plot! Whew! How the hell do you fight that? The Saudis are doomed!
#2
A Freedom-loving AlQ Caliphatist Neo-Zionist plot!
Freedom-loving and CDLR should not be used in the same sentence. I just Googled them and was browsing their message board. Reads like any other jihadi site, I think the legitimate rights they want to defend are the rights to kill any infidel they want. I believe they oppose the Saudi Royals because they are not holy enough.
Posted by: Steve ||
05/04/2004 13:13 Comments ||
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Just having fun, Steve! And, BTW, this further supports my conclusion: the Magic Kingdom's Royals are doomed!
#4
So, .com, let's play this out. The Saudi royal family, such as it is, goes down. The lucky ones pack off to Switzerland. The unlucky ones go down in a hail of lead. What happens to the oil fields and production? Who is going to deal with Jihadis? Will the Saudi share of world production get cut off for a long time? It seems that once Al and the Q's take over, they have killed off the host, and thus themselves. Game this for me, if you would.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
05/04/2004 14:25 Comments ||
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I believe that Saudi Arabia will become more like Iran. I do not think that they will cut off production but China and Eurabia will be getting most of its export.
#6
I do not think that they will cut off production but China and Eurabia will be getting most of its export.
With a truly poED US the SA has control over pumping but zero control over who gets the oil. In a serious situation the US Navy will broker how the oil is distributed.
#7
Gee, AP, there's this 40 km strip of land on the Persian Gulf that could form the basis for the Republic of Eastern Arabia ...
... just pre-empting .com :-)
Posted by: Steve White ||
05/04/2004 18:01 Comments ||
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Boys, why worry about who gets the oil?
After this attack, a good number of Western oil workers left SA already..and if the situation doesn't get better (which it won't), the rest will leave, too.
SA can't pump any oil without expat oil people to help them get it out of the ground and refine it.
They don't know how and such work is "beneath them," doncha know?
As my friend dotcom said, the Sauds are doomed because even the home-grown Waahab terrorists like OBL and AQ that they spawned, funded and supported think they're corrupt and debauched (which they are) and must be deposed.
Posted by: Jen ||
05/04/2004 18:06 Comments ||
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Ambassador James C. Oberwetter told reporters after meeting the American community that his call to leave the Kingdom was merely a request. âThe US government is not in a position to cause that to happen. Those are individual decisions by private Americans.â He expressed sympathy for the families of the Western expatriates and the Saudi who died in the gunfire as well as to the injured survivors. Commenting on the attack on Saturday when two Americans, two British, one Australian and a Saudi were killed, he said investigations were still under way, but information so far indicated the operation was planned at least several days before and not spontaneous. One of the vehicles used was a Coast Guard van and another, according to eyewitnesses, had been purchased for cash in Yanbu several days before the killing spree. Oberwetter said the attacks were therefore unlikely to have been spurred by the release of photographs of US and British soldiers abusing and humiliating Iraqi prisoners.
The reaction of the British and Australian governments has been more muted. A travel advisory issued yesterday by the Australian government said: âAustralians should defer non-essential travel to Saudi Arabia. Australians in Saudi Arabia concerned for security should consider departure. Australians who choose to remain should exercise extreme caution.â Since May 2003, the government of Australia has authorized the voluntary departure of the dependents of Australian Embassy staff in Riyadh. The UK government advised on May 2 against âall but essential travel to Saudi Arabia,â saying that if British nationals choose to remain or travel they âshould take all necessary steps to protect your safety and make sure you have confidence in your individual security arrangements.â It suggests a high level of vigilance and avoidance of places where foreigners gather, citing hotels as an example.
The killing spree in Yanbu began early Saturday when four men sprayed the offices of oil contractor ABB Lummus with gunfire and then drove through Yanbu heading for a boysâ school before being stopped and killed by police. Eyewitnesses said they saw at least one mutilated body dragged through the streets behind the terroristsâ car, according to the AP news agency. A US Embassy spokeswoman confirmed one of the bodies was badly mutilated. However, an official statement carried by the Saudi Press Agency has denied this. The ABB group yesterday confirmed the identification of the five Westerners killed. It named them as Americans Stephen LaGuardia, 62, and Philip Coplen, 53; Britons Michael Hardy, 44, and Michael McGillen, 52; and Australian Anthony Mason, 57. ABB has said that all its remaining 90 expatriate employees and some 30 family members in Yanbu will leave the Kingdom in the next few days. âWe are shocked and saddened by the tragic loss of life and injuries sustainedâ by the companyâs staff, said Gary Steel, an ABB executive.
In Yanbu Al-Bahr, 14 kilometers north of the Royal Commission industrial site where the attacks happened, life was returning to normal yesterday. Children were playing football in vacant lots and women were going about their shopping and domestic chores. âWe wonât let the terrorists take over our life,â said Ali Obaid who was shopping with his family. âIf we did, they would have won.â
Posted by: tipper ||
05/04/2004 1:40:07 AM ||
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#1
Mustafa was wanted by the authorities and last left the Kingdom 10 years ago when he joined Saudi dissidents Saad Al-Faqih and Muhammad Al-Masari in London. He sneaked into the country to carry out his terror activities.
WTF!? Victims of our own stupidity.
Posted by: Howard UK ||
05/04/2004 13:31 Comments ||
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#1
The guy is right. It would not matter, if they were to use the entire Saudi Army to guard every compound here. The terrorists are in the inside. They are "normal" saudi citizens working regular jobs. They are harvesting what they have sown for years: hatred and barbarism!
#2
I have an idea on what could be done about those SA insiders. Do it, deny it, do it again, deny it again, repeat as required then make stupid excusses.
Muslim extremists face instant arrest and deportation if Britain is hit by a terror attack, it emerged last night. First out will be rabble-rousing cleric Abu Hamza followed by a dozen other known fanatics. Emergency powers have been drawn up to bypass long-winded appeals, sources revealed yesterday. Judicial reviews â used by lawyers to drag out appeals â will be axed. Asylum claims will be fast-tracked and rejected where appropriate. And judges who put human rights ahead of national security will be bypassed.
But there is little chance of the new powers being rushed through Parliament until AFTER terrorists commit an outrage â which is now seen as inevitable by police and MI5 chiefs. The current law is in sharp contrast to France, which acts to expel extremists within DAYS. It has already sent five hate-filled Islamic clerics packing so far this year. A top Government source said: âIf France can do it, so can we. There is a very strong case for this. But it will mean big changes in the law.â
A highly-placed figure close to the PM admitted it would be hard to act before an atrocity. He said: âThe judges who are now in place came into the law in the 1960s and take a very literal view of the Human Rights Act. âThey automatically refer cases to appeal rather than risk an infringement of human rights.â
Ministers are also reluctant to deport anyone who might face the death penalty. But there are fears of public fury if trouble-makers like Hamza are left to spew out propaganda after an attack. British-born suicide bombers involved in terror attacks in Israel have been linked to Hamza. And there are claims he incites impressionable young UK Muslims to carry out suicide bombings in Britain. He has used a string of expensive appeals, paid for by taxpayers, to drag out moves to expel him to Egypt where he faces terror charges. Lawyers argue that he risks the death sentence there.
The Government blames Tory and Lib Dem peers for blocking fast-track deportation measures in the new Asylum Bill, now before Parliament. A Tory party spokeswoman claimed yesterday that the âcatch-allâ clause was too sweeping. But she added that the Conservatives would back powers to âdeport foreign nationals judged to be a risk to public securityâ.
Posted by: Mike Sylwester ||
05/04/2004 11:13:29 PM ||
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Good trial balloon.
Posted by: Mr. Davis ||
05/04/2004 23:27 Comments ||
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Deportation's way too lenient for people who are judged to have incited the attack that would have already taken place. This must surely be an effort to protect enemies of the state, from ugly violent reprisals, just as much as it is to remove them for the threat they themselves pose. Abu Hamza has said and done enough already to warrant his lengthy imprisonment followed by deportation.
These scum come to the UK to subvert it. And all we'll do about it is throw them out (to somewhere that won't treat 'em too badly), only after an atrocity they actively encouraged? Good grief! If these aren't fifth columnists, I don't know who is.
#4
Well said, Bulldog. It's great that we have to wait until an atrocity is committed - sure makes me feel safe on the tube on the way to work. It's only through stirling intelligence work by MI5/6 that we haven't had one yet. Hamza et al. should be locked up now - not merely deported to a sympathetic regime where they can start subversive activities again. This strikes me as a 'throw away the key' job until he apologises for his vitriol.
Posted by: Howard UK ||
05/05/2004 5:18 Comments ||
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Indeed. If you come here to shout "death to UK/USA/western civilisation", and the moment the death actually comes to your named victims, the government wraps you in a blanket and swifts you away to sunnier climes, I think the population has a right to be very, very angry. They're angry enough already, and molly-coddling the enemies in our midsts won't do the government's credibility any good at all. I don't agree with example-setting punishments per se, but simply chucking them out would send out a very bad, very soft, message to their dim-witted followers left behind.
Make these scum stay in the UK where they can enjoy a well-earned cell in HMP Olde Victorian, and the eternal gratitude of the locals they crawled here to despise.
#6
I hear Barlinney has luxurious cells and wonderful slopping-out facilities.
Posted by: Howard UK ||
05/05/2004 6:10 Comments ||
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There may be a time when it becomes necessary to execute people like Hamza. It's not something I'd support lightly, but I'd rather if their crimes were serious enough, they were executed here rather than deported to an uncertain fate.
#8
I can't see that happening under the current government and if it does the Tipton Taleban should be up on the gallows with him - Far more fun to stick Hook in solitary and forget about him. There was a Jamaican born Imam who recently received a moderate custodial sentence (8 years??) in the UK for advocating the murder of Jews and Christians. Why hasn't Hamza received similar? Could he secretly be 'talking' as Abu Qatada supposedly is?
Posted by: Howard UK ||
05/05/2004 7:33 Comments ||
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Posted by: Paul Moloney ||
05/04/2004 03:22 ||
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#1
Umm, one question: who can guarantee that a significant number of the "ethnic" officers (hint: they don't mean Chinese or West Indians) would not be working for the terrorists ?
Posted by: Carl in N.H ||
05/04/2004 12:01 Comments ||
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ex-BBC Director-General Greg Dyke is hideously stupid, because remarks only create commotion that isn't there. But I guess that's part of the reason he is an "ex-BBC Director General"
#6
AFAISI, most of this is 'positive discrimination' only in the sense that most physical discrimination between applicants for jobs, where its relevant to their ability to do the function required, is positive. You wouldn't go recruiting anyone from the Afro-Caribbean community if you had a big operation to infiltrate skinhead football hooligan gangs, for instance. It just wouldn't be sensible.
That said, promotion based on race is a step too far. Unless these individuals are engaged in active duty, it doesn't matter what colour their skin is. And if new 'dermal camouflaged' recruits don't want to report to a boss who may be white, it's a good sign they shouldn't be in the force to begin with.
#7
Chief constables want change in law to boost ethnic minority officers through positive discrimination
Well at least they're up front about it. Here in the U.S., this sort of behavior is sanitized with a nice, tidy name such as "affirmative action", and more often than not, there isn't any real problem that needs addressing other than someone complaining about some perceived racial imbalance.
#8
One of the unintended consequences of affirmative action (positive discrimination) is a diminution of respect for the professions so blessed. There is a presumption that the position is not particularly important if political correctness carries more weight than merit. All in all, the UK is starting down the slippery slope of dissolution and debasement of public institutions.
Posted by: Random thoughts ||
05/04/2004 16:52 Comments ||
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I agree with you totally in principle, Random thoughts, in that dsicrimination where skin colour/race/religion etc. is irrelevant to someone's ability to do the job, is totally wrong. However, in this case such discrimination may be required. It shouldn't be an issue - that fact that it's being hailed as an example of "positive discrimination" is worrying. Recognising the need to recruit people best able to infiltrate our Muslim terrorists cells, is not.
The combination of a shadowy nuclear weapons programme and a Communist leadership obsessed with secrecy has made North Korea a byword for crisis.
North Korean leaders rarely talk in depth with visitors, but when they do the result is much-needed new perspective on one of the most pressing security issues confronting the world today.
Based on four days of intensive conversations with senior officials in Pyongyang, it is clear that North Korea is eager to resolve the nuclear weapons crisis - but only by concluding a step-by-step denuclearisation agreement linked with progress towards the normalisation of ties with the US.
Economic pressures, intensified by bold, market-based reforms, make such a deal critical for the stability of Kim Jong-il's regime. But he will not accept the Bush administration's demand for the "complete, verifiable, irreversible dismantling" (CVID) of his nuclear weapons programme all at once, without knowing what he will get in return.
This is the assessment that emerges from interviews in Pyongyang with Kim Yong-nam, number two to Kim Jong-il; Paik Nam-soon, foreign minister; Kim Gye-gwan, vice-foreign minister; Gen Ri Chan-bok, spokesman for the Korean People's Army; and others.
At the start of my two hours with Kim Yong-nam, president of the Supreme People's Assembly, whom I had met four times before, he said he had just come from watching a CNN programme about Bob Woodward's new book, Plan of Attack. "It seems Mr [George W.] Bush is being kept very busy with Iraq," he said.
"We don't think he is at all serious about resolving the nuclear issue with us in a fair way, since we obviously can't accept 'CVID first'. My feeling is he is delaying resolution of the nuclear issue due to Iraq and the presidential election.
"But time is not on his side," he added. "We are going to use this time 100 per cent effectively to strengthen our nuclear deterrent both quantitatively and qualitatively. Why doesn't he accept our proposal to dismantle our programme completely and verifiably through simultaneous steps by both sides?"
In step one, explained Kim Gye-gwan, North Korea would freeze its plutonium programme in exchange for multilateral energy aid, an end to US economic sanctions and the removal of North Korea from the US list of terrorist states, which would open the way for World Bank and Asian Development Bank aid. "This would be the starting point toward complete dismantlement," Kim Gye-gwan said, "if the United States becomes our friend."
Pressed for details, he declared a freeze meant that "we would not enlarge the stockpile. The amount frozen would depend on what the US is prepared to do." Thus, if the payoff in energy aid was big enough, inspectors would be granted the access necessary to confirm how much plutonium had been reprocessed; the plutonium could then be placed under controls and further reprocessing could be prohibited.
Initially, Kim Gye-gwan said the freeze would only ban reprocessing and would not cover the operation of nuclear reactors for civil power generation. Later he indicated that this demand was negotiable.
North Korea has proposed that negotiations on the freeze start immediately, during the meeting of a six-nation working group in Beijing on May 12, but Kim Gye-gwan said the US wanted the agenda restricted to CVID.
Kim Yong-nam has dismissed suggestions that North Korea - or a unified Korea - would refuse to give up nuclear weapons capabilities because neighbouring Russia and China are both nuclear powers and Japan might yet become one.
"No," he said. "We want a nuclear-free Korean peninsula, and we have no intention of getting engaged in a nuclear arms race with neighbouring nations.
"The only reason we are developing nuclear weapons is to deter an American pre-emptive attack. After all, we have been singled out as the target for such an attack and we are the justification for the development of a new generation of US nuclear weapons. We don't want to suffer the fate of Iraq."
Gen Ri Chan-bok said: "We don't mind the possession of nuclear weapons by Russia and China, because they're not a threat to us. Although Japan is not friendly, I don't know whether Japan is developing nuclear weapons or not, but in any case, our nuclear deterrent is not against Japan or anyone else, just against the United States."
These allegations evoked categorical denials. "We make a clear distinction between missiles and nuclear material," declared Kim Yong-nam. "We're entitled to sell missiles to earn foreign exchange. But in regard to nuclear material our policy past, present and future is that we would never allow such transfers to al-Qaeda or anyone else. Never."
Paik Nam-soon, the foreign minister, said: "Let me make clear that we denounce al-Qaeda, we oppose all forms of terrorism and we will never transfer our nuclear material to others. Our nuclear programme is solely for our self-defence. We denounce al-Qaeda for the barbaric attack of 9/11, which was a terrible tragedy and inflicted a great shock to America. Bush is using that shock to turn the American people against us, but the truth is that we want and need your friendship."
The biggest change in North Korea since my last visit three years ago is the social ferment resulting from economic reforms initiated by Kim Jong-il in mid-2002. North Korea is slowly moving toward a mixed economy.
The showcase of this change is the Tong-Il market in central Pyongyang, where about 2,200 vendors sell everything from farm produce to television sets. Twenty similar indoor markets are now under construction throughout Pyongyang and more are planned.
Some of the food sold in these markets comes from rural co-operatives that are now permitted to sell any surplus they produce over the government procurement quota, and some is grown in private plots. But much of the food and some of the consumer goods are imported from neighboring Manchuria by a network of officially-sanctioned Korean and Chinese middlemen.
State-owned factories no longer receive subsidies to cover their losses and are encouraged to find their own markets for their products, trade with each other and keep and reinvest any profits.
The jury is still out on the economic impact of price and wage reforms that have rewarded farmers with higher prices and given higher wages to groups critical to the regime's power - notably miners, some industrial workers and the armed forces.
Politically, the higher prices for farmers have stabilised Kim Jong-il's support in the countryside. In the more populous urban areas, however, the wages of white collar workers have not been increased enough to keep pace with inflation, including government bureaucrats.
Many resident diplomats and aid officials say that unless North Korea can attract large-scale foreign aid to rebuild its infrastructure, especially its electricity, water and transport systems, its economic problems will remain serious. The economic potential of the reforms will not be realised and their net social and political effects could be destabilising. Kim Jong-il needs a nuclear deal with the US in order to open up an influx of aid, trade and investment.
At the same time, hardliners will go along with such a deal only if it includes significant aid commitments, and if it removes the threat of a US pre-emptive strike, which has led to the escalation of the North Korea nuclear effort during the past two years.
Could the US and its allies ever be sure that a closed society such as North Korea lives up to a denuclearisation agreement?
I told my interlocutors that no US president would give Pyongyang the binding security guarantee that it had sought in the nuclear negotiations. The Pentagon would insist that the US retained the option of a retaliatory second strike in the event that North Korea should attack South Korea, Japan or the US.
Surprisingly, one of my North Korean interlocutors said Pyongyang might reconsider its demand for a security guarantee if a new administration proved less hostile than the current one. The presence of US diplomats and businessmen in Pyongyang after the normalisation of the US-North Korea relationship might be a better guarantee against a pre-emptive strike, he said, than a paper security assurance.
But the window of opportunity for a nuclear deal could quickly close when - or if - Pyongyang conducts another long-range missile test or a nuclear test.
Asked how long North Korea could wait before conducting such tests, Kim Yong-nam replied: "There is no deadline in the negotiations. We're patient. But if the United States doesn't alter its position, we can't foresee what will happen and we'll have to decide about testing when the time comes."
Despite insistent probing, it was not possible to penetrate the mysteries still surrounding Pyongyang's nuclear effort: has it mastered the miniaturisation techniques necessary to equip missiles with nuclear warheads? Does it possess nuclear bombs deliverable from aircraft, and if so, how many? Or is it still at the stage of experimenting with nuclear "devices" that are not yet militarily operational? In short, is there more bluff than reality to the North Korea nuclear alarm?
Calculated ambiguity greeted questions about the nature of the "nuclear deterrent" Pyongyang says it possesses.
"That's a confidential military issue," said Kim Gye-gwan. "But remember that the bomb dropped by the US at Nagasaki was made after four months of preparation. It's now a half century later, and we have more up-to-date technologies, so you can come to your own conclusions on this matter."
Paik Nam-soon said: "I don't think mere devices and the possession of nuclear material constitute a genuine deterrent. When we say deterrent, we mean a capability that can deter an attack."
Gen Ri Chan-bok's reply about testing suggested that there might indeed be an element of bluff in what North Korea says. At first, he replied: "When we can't develop without a test, we'll test." But then he added: "Even without a test, we can develop, complete and manufacture nuclear weapons."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
05/04/2004 1:16:50 PM ||
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I am just glad that north korea has given their promise, its worked soooo well in the past.
#2
Kim will likely do a Kadaffy and get the red carpet Libya treatment, do a tour of the capitals of EUrope getting his ring kissed and inspiring french fashion designers' clothing lines next season. If Kim is going to do it, he better go for it now before some DIM donkey dick falls ass backwards into the US Presidency. DIMs do not want North Korea to join the family of freer nations as they see North Korea, Cuba and a few other still surviving commie cesspool states as keeping hope alive for a global MARXOID republic.
#4
Garrison. KJI is unlikely to visit any country other than China in the foreseeable future for fear of assassination or coup. If the people really loved him, he wouldn't have to coerce them into saying it. Like Robert Mugabe or Yasser Arafat, if he left, he might not be able to return.
Also, it's likely that NK tested their weapons through the Paks (unexplained traces of plutonium in fallout from Pak bomb tests).
Posted by: Random thoughts ||
05/04/2004 17:01 Comments ||
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#5
If it's good enough for Jimmah, it's good enough for me.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
05/04/2004 22:55 Comments ||
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When Osama bin Laden issued his declaration of war upon the United States in 1998 he mocked America for its weak response to his attacks against it in Africa and elsewhere. He said: "When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, they naturally gravitate towards the strong horse."
There are those who argue that the war in Iraq has inflamed and is inflaming Islamic opinion and creating more people willing to give their own lives to destroying the West. Well, it may be so. The first Gulf war, fought to liberate Kuwait, was one of bin Ladenâs early clarion calls for holy war. Should we therefore have left Kuwait in the hands of Saddam?
Other Western policies may also anger Islamists. Of course the hideously painful stand-off between Israel and the Palestinians creates militants. But even if the destination on the "road map", a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine, were reached immediately, that would not end the threat from bin Laden and those who think like him.
Do not forget that during the 1990s, when there was no war in Iraq, perhaps tens of thousands of Islamic warriors were trained in the bin Laden camps in Afghanistan. That was a time when the US president, Bill Clinton, was working overtime to create an agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. The US finally came to the rescue of Muslims in Bosnia, after Europe had failed to do so, and then led the effort to save Muslims in Kosovo.
None of that stopped bin Laden from building up his organisation and attacking the US wherever he could.
In the 1990s the US failed to respond decisively to the attacks upon it. Bin Laden saw the US as weak. After September 11 President Bush and his coalition partners were determined to show that the West as a whole was not a weak horse, after all.
Bin Laden does not himself direct all the terrorist attacks in the Western and Arab worlds. But his evil doctrine and his extraordinary success on September 11, 2001, have given a poisonous new strength and vision to disparate Islamic groups around the world. They live to kill. The most determined and, by their own standards, the most devout live to die.
They cannot be appeased.
The new Spanish government is quite, quite wrong. Withdrawal from the attempt to build a decent Iraq will not protect anyone. On the contrary, it will lead to disaster.
The only long-term hope, I think, lies in the transformation of the region.
Consider the UN Development Programâs special Arab Development Report. In one of the richest areas of the world, 40 per cent of adult Arabs are illiterate (two thirds of them women). And consider, the combined GDP of the 22 Arab League states is less than that of Spain. One third of the people of the region live on less than $2 a day.
There is "poverty of capabilities and poverty of opportunities". These have their roots in three deficits : freedom, womenâs empowerment and knowledge. The study found that of the seven regions of the world the Arab region had the fewest freedoms of all.
Why does the future look so bleak? One of the principal reasons is bad government. Saddamâs was the worst in the Arab world, but there are many others. Syria is governed by a corrupt and despotic family clique from a minority sect. Egypt has been ruled by emergency decree since 1981.
But there are signs of change. It is already possible to see good effects of the removal of Saddam in the region. First, and most dramatically, perhaps, Gaddafi handed over all his WMD programs in return for being allowed back into the international community.
In the last year civic movements demanding change have grown for the first time in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Syria. They were not created by George Bush, but they do say that Washingtonâs new democratisation policy has given them a voice, an audience and a partial shield against oppression - three things they did not have a year ago.
Now reform is on the agenda throughout the Middle East. Who has put it there? Not the European Union, for sure. The US.
Right now, at US insistence, the so-called sherpas from major Western governments are preparing for the June G-8 summit.
The hope was, and must remain, that success in creating a better society in Iraq can have a domino effect on the region. It seems to me tragic that Romano Prodi, the European Commission president, Dominique de Villepin, till recently the French foreign minister, and other politicians are competing with the Spanish Prime Minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, to denounce the US and its allies in Iraq.
Australiaâs strategic reality is a partnership and alliance with the US.
For all its faults, American commitment and American sacrifice are essential to this world. As in the 20th century, so in the 21st only America has the power and the optimism to defend the international community against what really are forces of darkness. In this endeavour America needs its allies in the liberal democratic world - for real and symbolic purposes. Indeed, the two often march together.
The new beginning in Iraq is proving much more painful than anyone, supporters or critics of the war, would have hoped. The terrorists want to see Iraq subjugated again - either under a Saddamite or an Islamic dictatorship. It would be a catastrophe for Iraq and the world if they were allowed to succeed.
I think Australians understand that and I think Australians will not want to abandon this brave, difficult and important mission.
William Shawcross is an author whose most recent book is Allies, the US and the World in the Aftermath of the Iraq War (Allen & Unwin). This is an edited extract from a speech he gave last night at the Sydney Institute annual lecture.
Posted by: tipper ||
05/04/2004 2:01:46 AM ||
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Of course the hideously painful stand-off between Israel and the Palestinians creates militants.
Before September 11, 2001, while I despised terrorists, I never advocated killing them outright. After that, I no longer have a problem with the popping them wherever and whenever they are found, no questions asked.
Three bomb blasts hit a central Athens police station early Wednesday, a police official said. It was not clear whether there were any casualties or damage to the building. The police official said authorities had received an anonymous warning that the three explosive devices would go off at the police station in Kalithea. In August Greece hosts the Olympics, amid fears the games could be a target for political violence. If there was a warning then its not islamicists.
Posted by: Phil B ||
05/04/2004 10:12:15 PM ||
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If there was a warning then its not islamicists.
"The first two explosions went off in a span of five minutes. The third exploded half an hour later as bomb experts were still looking for it," the police official told Reuters.
Posted by: Mr. Davis ||
05/04/2004 22:50 Comments ||
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I dunno; third bomb could have been intended to kill rescuers. Or the timers were screwed, and the whole set-up was intended to replay Bali.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
05/04/2004 23:04 Comments ||
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Irony alert.I had just finished reading articles on ESPN site about security concerns for Olympics.I winced when I read Greek official state there were no more terrorist groups in Greece,because I knew that one of the groups would respond.
#6
a) CIA plot to make the Greeks look bad.
b) Mossad plot to make the Greeks look bad.
c) Turkish plot to make the Greeks look bad.
d) All of the above plot to make the Greeks look bad.
Posted by: Mr. Davis ||
05/05/2004 0:03 Comments ||
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If there was a warning then its not islamicists.
Responsibility means little here, if anything. Greece just got put on notice that they don't have a handle on everything, and with the Olympic Games just around the corner, this development can't look very good.
A group of alleged Islamic terrorists arrested in Turkey on suspicion of planning an attack on a NATO meeting were trained in Pakistan and were planning to carry out a suicide mission against US President George W. Bush, Turkish press reports said Tuesday.
Lemme guess: They trained with Lashkar e-Taiba?
The suspects, who had been tracked by Turkish authorities for months before their arrest, were in possession of Turkish-subtitled video cassettes attributed to Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden calling for a jihad, or holy war, against the "great Satan" of America, according to the reports. They were allegedly planning to bomb the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) summit scheduled for June 28 and 29 in Istanbul -- the scene of four bloody suicide bombings five months ago -- where Bush and other world leaders will attend, according to police sources quoted by the papers. The suspects were arrested in raids carried out jointly by Turkish secret police and anti-terrorist units in the northwestern city of Bursa, though no dates were disclosed. Nine of them were charged Monday by a Bursa court with "membership in an outlawed terrorist organization" and 16 others, arrested in the Bursa raids and separate operations in Istanbul, were released.
Separated the wheat from the chaff, I guess...
The Hurriyet newspaper said the suspects confessed to prosecutors they were planning a suicide attack to kill Bush. The June summit in Turkey, NATOâs only Muslim member, will be the first time the heads of state and government of the 26 NATO members gather in Istanbul, and the war in neighboring Iraq was expected to feature high on the agenda. The nine were charged with membership in an Iraq-based Islamic extremist group called Ansar al-Islam, an organization Washington says is linked to Al-Qaeda. The Hurriyet and Vatan papers said several of them underwent physical and psychological training in Pakistan to prepare them to carry out a suicide mission. At least one of the suspects had been trained in flying gliders, the two papers said. Pakistan is one of Washingtonâs pivotal allies in the campaign to kill or capture Al-Qaeda fighters, and has vowed to capture hundreds of Al-Qaeda-linked fighters and their tribal protectors it says are hiding out in Pakistanâs remote northwest frontier, a deeply conservative region where Osama bin Laden is believed to have taken shelter.
Their words are a lot more powerful than their armed forces, though...
The reports said searches of the Turkish suspectsâ homes and work places turned up huge quantities of weapons and bomb-making equipment including timers, detonators, chemicals and instruction manuals. Plans for an attack against a bank and a synagogue in Bursa were also seized, the reports said. Bursa governor Oguz Kagan Koksal said the suspects were arrested after being followed for the last year and had been planning to flee to Iraq to fight US troops there after carrying out their planned attack in Turkey.
Those that didn't explode, I guess...
A NATO spokesman in Brussels on Monday said a change of venue for the June summit was "not under consideration. The Turkish authorities are responsible for security and we have confidence in them."
A lot more confidence than I'd have in the Paks, that's for sure...
Turkish authorities have been on edge since a small radical group also linked to Al-Qaeda carried out four suicide attacks in November in Istanbul against two Jewish synagogues, a British bank and the British consulate, leaving 62 people dead and hundreds injured. These attacks were officially blamed on local extremist movements. The US State Department has described Ansar al-Islam as a group of mainly Kurdish and Arabic militants, often trained in Afghanistan and linked to Al-Qaeda.
A Turkish court Monday charged nine suspected members of a group linked to Al Qaeda with plotting to bomb the NATO summit scheduled next month in Turkey's largest city, Istanbul. Turkey's CNN-Turk television news channel said at least three of the suspects had been planning a suicide bomb attack against President Bush, who will be among dozens of Western leaders expected to attend the June 28-29 gathering. The charges came after police arrested at least 25 suspected members of a terrorist cell last week in raids in Bursa and Istanbul. Seven of those detained in Bursa were released Monday after interrogation. Nine questioned in Istanbul also have been released. Turkish officials said the nine charged in Bursa were members of Ansar al Islam, but it was unclear whether it was the same group with that name formed by ethnic Kurds in Iraq's mountainous northern region.
My guess would be that it's probably al-Tawhid or one of al-Qaeda's homegrown Turkish appendages, though there were reports of Ansar sneaking into Turkey a while back. Be interesting to see whether or not this bunch is as connected to Iran as the Istanbooms mob.
Oguz Kagan Koksal, the local governor, told a news conference that police had searched the Bursa suspects' homes where equipment and manuals on how to make remote-controlled bombs were seized. Scores of rifles and handguns as well as videotapes showing Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden training militants at a camp in Afghanistan were also found. Koksal said those arrested had also planned to attack a synagogue in Bursa before going to Iraq to fight U.S. soldiers. U.S. and Iraqi Kurdish intelligence sources have tied Ansar al Islam to Al Qaeda and say the Kurdish group has shifted its operations to the northern Iraqi cities of Kirkuk and Mosul after U.S. forces attacked its mountain bases last year. "The connection between Ansar al Islam and Turkey is new," said a Western diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity. "We are aware, however, of small groups of Turks fighting alongside Iraqis against the Americans" in Iraq, the diplomat said.
The connection between Turkey and Kurds isn't new. I'd think it would be a preferred target of Kurdish nutbags...
Concerns about security have grown since November, when more than 50 people were killed in four suicide bomb attacks against British and Jewish targets in Istanbul, a city of 10 million people. The four men who carried out the attacks are said to have been ethnic Kurds from an Islamist stronghold in southeastern Turkey who may have had ties to Al Qaeda. Police investigations revealed that most of the perpetrators had either been trained or fought alongside Islamic militants in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Russian breakaway republic of Chechnya, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Muammer Guler, the governor of Istanbul, insisted that his city was secure and that the NATO summit would go ahead as planned. "We have taken all precautions; we are in full control," he said.
Famous last words...
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
05/04/2004 1:36:00 PM ||
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As a side note, this could be used as another bullet point in the "undesirable" category with regards to Turkey's desire for EU membership. Ask Jacques for further details.
#2
The charges came after police arrested at least 25 suspected members of a terrorist cell last week in raids in Bursa and Istanbul. Seven of those detained in Bursa were released Monday after interrogation. Nine questioned in Istanbul also have been released.
16 of 25 released? What?
Koksal said those arrested had also planned to attack a synagogue in Bursa before going to Iraq to fight U.S. soldiers.
Attack a synagogue before going to Iraq to fight US? Geez they talk about it as though it is spring training before baseball season.
I hope these bastards are being watched closely.
(CIA where are you?)
Istanbul / Constantinople NATO meeting. I don't have a warm & fuzzy feeling about this.
Especially since it is right before the "handover" to the IGC of Iraqi Administration.
BRUSSELS, Belgium - European officials conducted a simulation showing how al-Qaida could kill 40,000 people and plunge the continent into chaos if a crude nuclear device were detonated outside NATO headquarters in Brussels
"We are in a race between cooperation and catastrophe," said former Sen. Sam Nunn, who helped organize the exercise, dubbed Black Dawn. "To win this race, we have to achieve cooperation on a scale weâve never seen or attempted before."
Nunn spoke to reporters Tuesday, a day after the closed-door war games attended by top officials including the European Union (news - web sites)âs security chief, Javier Solana, and his new counterterrorism czar, Gijs de Vries.
In first part of the scenario, European officials were asked how they would respond to intelligence that al-Qaida had obtained enough highly enriched uranium to build a nuclear bomb.
In the second, they were confronted with computer projections and video displays illustrating the impact of terrorists exploding the device at NATOâs headquarters on the outskirts of Brussels, immediately killing 40,000 people, overwhelming hospitals with hundreds of thousands of injured, spreading panic through Europe and plunging the world economy into turmoil.
"Once you are in this phase, there are no good options," said Michele Flournoy, senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who helped prepare the exercise.
More than 50 people from 15 countries and a dozen international organizations attended the exercise, mostly EU ambassadors but also civilian and military officials from NATO, the International Atomic Energy Agency, Interpol and other bodies.
Nunn appealed for the Europeans to step up funding for increased protection at sites where weapons-grade uranium and plutonium are stored â particularly in former Soviet states. He said preventing al-Qaida from getting its hands on such material was the best chance of stopping it from building a bomb.
"Itâs well within al-Qaidaâs operational capabilities to recruit the technical expertise needed to build a crude nuclear devise," he said. "The hard part is getting the nuclear material, but we do not make it nearly hard enough."
Nunn, a Democrat from Georgia and former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, helped push through a $10 billion program in 1991 to destroy and safeguard weapons of mass destruction in Russia and other former Soviet republics. But he said at least 60 percent of sites still must be secured.
He said European leaders should make good on pledges made two years ago as part of a $20 billion commitment by the Group of Eight to provide more funding for that program over 10 years. They should also push President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin (news - web sites) to do more when the G-8 group of world leaders meets next month in Georgia, he said.
Solana and NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer convened the exercise to show the extent of the danger. "The threat of catastrophic terrorism is not confined to the United States or Russia or the Middle East," Solana said. "The new terrorist movements seem willing to use unlimited violence and cause massive casualties."
Nunn urged increased protection for weapons-grade uranium kept at research sites, which are often poorly guarded university facilities; accelerated destruction of tactical nuclear weapons by both the United States and Russia; enhanced international intelligence sharing; and more help to find new jobs for poorly paid Russian nuclear scientists.
EMPHASIS ADDED Still no mention of any credible deterrent. Unless a united Western world comes up with some method of permanently forestalling a terrorist nuclear attack, one will happen.
When enough tens of thousands of people have died and enough trillions of dollars have been bled out of our world by way of flat economies and regime change by force, maybe then the worldâs governments will realize that there does exist a credible deterrent to terrorism.
Islamic terrorists purposefully eschew both a central location and any national affiliation in order to frustrate traditional military prosecution. By flouting all known behavioral conventions regarding the sanctity of human life, terrorists make mandatory some form of wholesale retaliation against their stated intention of world domination. There exists a credible deterrent to such depravity and civilization must find the moral fortitude to employ it.
Islamic terror seeks to hold the entire world hostage through random violence. All free people are obliged to combat such political blackmail with overwhelming force. Nothing less is adequate to the task and time is running out before Islamic terrorists finally make a palpable demonstration of their intent to slaughter millions of people at a time in pursuit of their goals.
The Strategy of Islamic Terror
The hostage mentality and decentralized nature of Islamic terror demands a matching response. There is only one way to achieve parity against such a nebulous yet virulent menace. Free society must find a single and effective lever against such an intentionally randomized pattern of attack. If Muslim radicals seek to hold hostage our liberty, all free people must conclusively trump this attempt at intimidation by imperiling the only thing that Islamists hold dear. There is only one class of items that fall into this category.
A central feature and critical component of Islamic terrorâs pseudo-moral campaign is religion. They shamelessly use faith as a smokescreen for duplicity and profer it in philosophic argument against free thinking secular opponents. Islamic theocracy knows how it epitomizes a most horrific melding of church and state to the defenders of liberty. By cloaking their political coercion with clerical garb, Islamists seek to neuter any opposition with protests of religious suppression. It is this fundamental artifice that must be exposed and turned against them. All attempts to thwart Islamic terrorism will hinge upon this cardinal tenet of their doctrine.
The absolutist and nonnegotiable nature of Islamist terror must be a central feature of any functional counterattacks against it. An equal degree of resolve is required of those who will successfully defeat against this assault on civilization. Reciprocal levels of unabashed and brute force methodology must be administered as an antidote to such hidebound mentality. As adherents of a just and humane society we are not permitted to mirror the violence and savagery of our terrorist opponents. To match their atrocities with similar barbarity is not an option. A credible deterrent to Islamic terror must manifest as a credible threat yet still be stripped of any cruelty or brutality.
Fundamentalist Islamâs insistence upon global theocracy must be recognized as the program of worldwide cultural genocide it really is. Any disregard shown for this overarching aspect of their aims is a fatal error. Once this crucial feature of their agenda is openly admitted, a path towards radical Islamâs suppression finally begins to appear. It is only after recognizing the full scope of Islamic terrorâs destructive capacity that the need to permanently quash it becomes apparent. Those who are unconvinced of their threatâs broader implications too often serve terrorismâs ends by maintaining a dismissive or even protective attitude towards the Islamistsâ ostensibly religious objectives.
It is a dire mistake to think that radical Islam is driven by purely religious motivations. This is how they continue to mask their actual methods and goals. Secular society rightly enshrines religious freedom as a fundamental human right. Islamistâs pervert any sanctity of this liberty by acting under the cover of their religionâs role as an established institution. Terrorismâs success is contingent upon the free worldâs repugnance at condemning long standing religions like Islam. Yet these radicals instantly repudiate this sacred right by openly professing their aim of violent domination. The intrinsic duplicity shown by such malicious hypocrisy constitutes a central tenet of validly refuting any claim to freedom of religious practice the Islamists make.
The principal function that freedom of religion serves is to sustain peaceful human coexistence. Insisting upon such liberty whilst simultaneously marching under false colors in pursuit of theocratic domination is the height of moral bankruptcy. There is no possible religious justification for such an ultimately dishonest creed. Any attempt to do so must instantly be recognized as a naked lust for political power and nothing else. Our world has no place for such malevolent conniving. Healthy society cannot sustain such malignant treachery without succumbing to cancerous putrefaction.
Like any religion, Islam is incapable of providing incontrovertible proof of its supremacy over all other faiths. For its radical factions to seek such ascendancy solely on the basis of their own unilateral religious intolerance is patently ridiculous. It is not any fault of this worldâs remaining population if the majority of Muslims remain unable to expel such apostates from within their midst. There is no justifiable reason why the globe should be punished for Islamâs inability to purge itself of genocidal thugs. Should they prove unwilling or incapable of doing so, Western culture is obliged to promote their own solutions, however unpalatable they might be to Islam.
"All we are breaking are stones," is how Mullah Omar described the Talebanâs destruction of ancient Buddhist cliff carvings and priceless museum statuary in Afghanistan. From now on all Islamic monuments can only be regarded as ordinary masonry in return. Fundamentalist Islamâs obdurate refusal to respect any other cultureâs monuments should be turned against them in full force. Their unwillingness to recognize the value of secular societyâs own structures must be punished. Radical Islam has to be repaid in kind for such blatant disrespect of any other cultureâs achievements. To advance their cause through the annihilation of all other societies is a direct admission of jihadist Islamâs moral bankruptcy.
A Roadmap For Deterrence
Chemical or Biological Attack:
First Biological Attack: Upon any major city being dusted with Anthrax, Medina is immediately dusted in a similar fashion after an evacuation warning. In order to fully impress the unacceptable nature of such an attack, Medina is also dusted again (after warning) immediately prior to the Haj.
Second Biological Attack: Medina is dusted for one entire calendar year extending through any subsequent Haj.
Third Biological Attack: Mecca is dusted at once and then immediately prior to any subsequent Haj.
Fourth Biological Attack: Mecca is dusted for one entire calendar year extending through any subsequent Haj.
Fifth Biological Attack: Mecca and Medina are continuously contaminated on a permanent basis until 15 calendar months elapse without any further biological attacks.
Radiological Attack: (dirty bomb)
First Radiological Attack: Medina is poisoned with a similar isotope. The Islamic world may now pick up the tab for decontaminating their precious shrine just as whatever victim metropolis shall have to do. Several billion dollars of clean-up expense should make clear the intense lack of wisdom involved with any such strategy.
Second Radiological Attack: Mecca is contaminated in similar fashion.
Third Radiological Attack: Mecca and Medina are dusted in similar fashion. All decontamination attempts are interdicted until 15 calendar months elapse without further radiological attack.
NOTE: Should terrorists merely scale back all attacks to Madrid style atrocities, it may well be necessary to strafe the subsequent Haj gathering at one of Islamâs shrines. No "under-radar" terror acts must be permitted. This is alarmingly close to "barbarity-in-kind" and may require better analysis. It is only suggested here as a response to purposefully scaled back attacks that will not trigger massive retaliation.
Nuclear Terror Attack:
First Nuclear Terror Attack: Retaliation in kind (depending upon warning or not) against Medina.
Second Nuclear Terror Attack: Retaliation in kind against Mecca.
NOTE: If the bomb isotopes can be traced to a given nuclear facility, that source country is also candidate for retaliation in kind. Donor countries must face dire consequences for any complicity in distributing nuclear weapons or fissile material to terrorists.
An Alternative Solution:
The only other viable solution top this is complete preemptive military takeover of Saudi Arabia by a Western Coalition. All access to Islamic shrines by those of Muslim faith is contingent upon a total lack of terror attacks world-wide.
While occupation would still represent a defilement, it does not carry with it the permanent desecration of these Holy sites. The entire Saudi peninsula would be declared a weapons-free zone except for coalition troops. A sentence of summary execution should be put in place for possession of any firearms or significant weaponry.
As usual, any alternative solutions are welcome. Military takeover is the only alternative imaginable to retaliation in kind for NBC attack. This must be made clear to all Islam post haste. Only a lever that applies force to all Muslims will achieve credible threat against those within their ranks who pursue violent jihad. When Islam shows itself capable of self-regulation, this policy can be altered accordingly. Until then, every major terror attack must have a penalty.
#1
This strategy has its merits. To be effective it must be publicly announced in advance. The muslim world must know that islamist terrorists hold the key to causing or preventing the contamination and/or destruction of the holy cities. If that contamination/destruction occurs, it is a direct and known consequence of the actions of the terrorits.
The problem with the strategy is that, in a way, it empowers the Qaeda types immensely. If what they are really interested in is creating a clash of civilizations, nothing could be better calculated to achieve that aim than to have the US or "the west" desecrate or destroy one of the holy cities. At that point there is no more room for moderate muslims to exist or persuade the rest of the muslim world to moderate itself. All muslims will become radicalized, and the armageddon that OBL is seeking becomes almost inevitable.
Posted by: Jen ||
05/04/2004 14:00 Comments ||
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Zenster I like it. Too bad it'll never happen though - Wouldn't want to offend the peace-loving, tolerant, Islamic world.
Posted by: Yosemite Sam ||
05/04/2004 14:26 Comments ||
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too many comments - you must have mucho time - you could of condesned into one sceanrio. all the scenarios have mecca and medina...
these should be changed to tehran and all iranian military installations. just taking out mecca is all based on religion ..take out the enablers of terrorism...with implicit threats to the sods....
Posted by: Dan ||
05/04/2004 14:57 Comments ||
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You've always wanted to write your own article, and now you have. I don't think you've improved upon the body of thought regards this topic - den Beste, Wretchard, Kagen, Peters, Steyn, VDH, et al have covered it very very well.
I find the various retribution schedules to be, well, bizarre. I do not fault the fact that a hard-hitting response would be required in the scenarios you present, but really - take a deep breath and re-read what you wrote and ask if this needed such lengthy codification.
I applaud "righteous indignation" for it usually has roots in heartfelt facts - most often personal experiences that convert the abstract into the concrete at personal expense - and I know it when I read it. This isn't it.
This diatribe is delivered with an authoritative air that you neither own nor command. It merely attempts to prove you're bloodier-minded or tougher or such a deep thinker or more this or more that, pfeh, buffoonery. Your opinions are based upon miracles witnessed and slights experienced second- or third-hand.
#6
i still think any country that is harbouring terrorist types and not doing fuck all about it or pretending they are but are not should be hawked over and the slightest terror act by one of its in house terrorists, be it against the host country or another country an Ohio class submarine should launch few nukes on the capital citys of the foolish terrorist hosting country. Give it a few years and a few stupid leaders later(Perv maybe one of them?) and the foolish hosts may begin to think its about time to stamp out these fuckers before they to get zapped at 100000 degrees, of course i doubt the host would clean themselves up, Iran,Syria and Pakistan would be no more :)
Posted by: Shep UK ||
05/04/2004 15:16 Comments ||
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Zipperhead fails to address at least 2 big things:
1.) In the WOT, the Enemy is a new kind of enemy as Wretchard pointed out a week or so ago.
It's a group of guys who move across the globe. Blending in here, then fading out after an attack, always on the move.
They'll have state sponsors, but determining which one is the trick.
Zipperhead's "Plan" presupposes that it's always and forever Saudi Arabia.
2.) I find the parts about "fifth bio attack" and "third nuke attack" almost funny.
If we did what we needed to do, there should be no "second" attacks, much less more, of any kind.
Plus, if we "dusted" Mecca and Medina with disease or radiation once, who would be so stupid as to go back for a second, third or fourth dose?
WTG, asshole, to alienate, if not outright murder, millions of Muslims who aren't jihadis, not to mention totally grossing out in a global, permanent and irreversible way the rest of the planet who will feel intimidated by this "kill them all" "plan."
As I said, before, you're nuts, Zipperhead.
You're not a patriot--you're a psychopath who "gets off" to mass murder of people who are "different" than you, which is the other 6 billion of us.
Posted by: Jen ||
05/04/2004 15:34 Comments ||
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Zenster - I have to commend you for laying out a scenario in a detailed way, that in some way or other we all have had in the back of our minds.
I do find the flaw that Dan has as well; "All the scenarios have Mecca and Medina. These should be changed to Tehran and all Iranian military installations. Just taking out Mecca is all based on religion. . ."
Whether it is Tehran, or Damascus, or whatever the source, we must attack the enabling country FIRST. If the Arab street sycophantically complains about what we did, and attacks on us continue, then we would have no choice but to continue with your scenario.
If the Eurowussies (Probablly one country in particular) start making noises about Bush, war criminal after a bio-chem-nuke attack response, and making threats to come here and arrest him, well, all I can say is, the Eiffel Tower will live forever in photos.
#9
Whether it is Tehran, or Damascus, or whatever the source, we must attack the enabling country FIRST. If the Arab street sycophantically complains about what we did, and attacks on us continue, then we would have no choice but to continue with your scenario.
Zero argument against this. I have already made clear my thoughts on Iran. Nonetheless, the Western world must have a credible response to any further terrorist atrocities. Reciprocity is one of the few justifiable vehicles.
However legion my detractors might be, I've yet to see anyone else provide a viable alternative. Islam shows no inclination to rid itself of the vermin that infest their ranks. Until they do, we must assert a penalty for this laxity. I'm open to suggestions.
#10
The problem with the strategy is that, in a way, it empowers the Qaeda types immensely. If what they are really interested in is creating a clash of civilizations, nothing could be better calculated to achieve that aim than to have the US or "the west" desecrate or destroy one of the holy cities.
This is the specific reason I have evolved the military occupation scenario as an alternative to any reciprocity. I see no other effective routes besides these two.
Whichever plan is selected, it must be announced in advance and laid out explicitly.
For those unclear on the subject, repeated dusting is necessary with anthrax spores as they have a limited lifetime in ambient conditions.
All I can say is that I am not prepared to wait around in a reactive mode. Once the first nuclear terror attack occurs, this world will be changed forever. It is quite possibly that decades of economic recession will follow. I refuse to sit idly by without any attempt to bring forth some sort of potential solution. Mine might be wrong, but no one else is offering up anything remotely effective.
I intend to prod all conscious people until someone else provides a better solution.
#11
Zenster posted this exact same thing a few weeks ago , but I don't have time to find it right now to link. In that discussion, which was rather lengthy, alternatives were discussed, including the effective alternatives being implemented by the Bush Admin.
Zenster: The terrorists don't really give a flip about Mecca and Medina--not really. But the rest of the Moslem world does. I understand that you would like to turn the Moslem world against their Moslem terrorists, but if Mecca and Medina are gone or tampered with in the way you have outlined, you've just provided all the motivation necessary for the enlistment in jihad, at a scale unimaginable. (And you think we got problems now?) Do you really think they would just stop fighting if what you advocate for ever happened? Of course they wouldn't. You obviously don't understand the Islamiofascist mind. You should be more careful what you wish for. And take into consideration the innocent lives that would be snuffed out in the process of what you espouse. Did you also forget how many Moslems are embedded in civilized countries around the world, including this one? Take out their "holy" places and you haven't even begun to see what they are capable of--right here in our own back yard.
The difference between you and Shep, is that Shep is engaging in "pub" speak. You--you're serious, and that's not a real bright thing to be serious about. The annihilation you suggest is nothing more than a "feel good" idea.
Other than that, I agree with Jen and .com regarding your post.
As sludj said: "At that point there is no more room for moderate muslims to exist or persuade the rest of the muslim world to moderate itself. All muslims will become radicalized, and the armageddon that OBL is seeking becomes almost inevitable."
Maybe it's the Armageddon that Zenster is seeking . . .
#12
As others have posted here before, the response that the US will HAVE to take to a nuclear explosion on our soil is almost too terrible to contemplate. Millions will be killed.
Hopefully making the cost of such an act clear to those who support/inspire the terrorists would create a level of deterrence. If it would inspire them to change and actually root out the evil that is within their community, all the better. Unfortunately, I don't think that Islam will be able to affect that change, regardless of the incentive.
Posted by: remote man ||
05/04/2004 16:51 Comments ||
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#13
"...however legion my detractors..."
LOL! Wow! Talk about your trophy-sized ego! You are the most self-aggrandizing pretentious chickenhawk REMF of all time! You 'n Micah - same same! Geeeeeez.
BigEd and others weren't around when you showed up and declared yourself an all-time idiotarian - and so they may fall for your drivel now. Fine, fine. You are what you are, lol, and nobody is considering your "plans" for anything - you can count on that! Lol!
#14
.com - If you haven't during the worst moments had thoughts of wondering if there were such a thing as a "moderate Moslem". Always equivocating vis a vis the Palesatinian issue. Couldn't unequivocally condemn 9/11. Always blaming the support for Israel, etc etc etc
I fall for NO ONE'S drivel. My point was that Zenster says stuff we all think about at one time or another. But as you see in #8, I think that if we were attacked, we should first eliminate the source of the attack as an entity. It would most likely be Iran, North Korea (crazy of course, not Islamic) or the replacement axis member, Syria. We owe no less to the thousands of our citizens who would be killed or maimed by a WMD attack on our soil.
We only go to Zenster's scenario if it turns out to be either them or us as a group, which it sadly may come to. Whatever you think of Zensters presentation, his point are valid for debate. If we don't examine our logic now, vette all possible scenarios, then we will be doing it in the afterglow (no pun intended) of a serious attack, emotions clouding everything.
#15
after reading everyones comments I reread it again and now I'm embarrased that I said I liked it. DotCom does a good job keeping me on track.
Posted by: Yosemite Sam ||
05/04/2004 17:58 Comments ||
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#16
I think Zenster's scenario is nuts too, but what would we do if Al Q lit off a nuke in NYC? Lets say 2 million people were killed with another 3 million injured or poisened. The call to respond against someone, anyone would be deafening.
I suppose we could undertake a massive conventional response, ie do Iraq all over again but much bigger and more ruthless. This would piss off the world's Muslims too.
That's why I think it is critical that we succeed in Iraq. We have to persevere and deal with the daily crap that we are now encountering. Failure really is not an option, or at least not one that I will accept for my two daughters sake.
Posted by: remote man ||
05/04/2004 18:41 Comments ||
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#17
BigEd - Your first paragraph makes no sense.
Regards the fact that "Zenster" voices what everyone thinks - I agree wholeheartedly that he repeats, endlessly and voluminously, what many think and post quite well for themselves.
If you think his retarded little tit-for-tat list is something of note, well hey, he's all yours.
#18
.com : My first paragraph questions the inability of "moderate Moslems" to speak up without bringing up the US support for Israel.
I do not accept his "retarded tit-for-tat list" as you call it. I just think his "list" is something that MANY PEOPLE have thought about, and ought to, whether you agree whohartedly or not.
Perhaps remote man's thought say it better than me
Failure really is not an option, or at least not one that I will accept for my two daughters sake.
#19
BigEd, you gotta think this through, my friend:
even given your scenario of a "likely" hit by "Iran, North Korea or Syria," what do you do if you're President Bush (that's "Shrub" to Zipperhead)? Nuke all 3 countries cause you're not sure?
And then, what if you're wrong in at least one case, probably 2?
And these countries, as evil as they might be, have friends and they have nukes...countries like Pakistan (funded by the Saudis), Russia and China.
And if they've signed some sort of mutual defense pact, they might nuke us back for nuking them.
And so on and so on.
Zipster is truly psychotic to even try to "war game" this scenario.
Don't do this at home! Leave it to the professionals.
Why do you think President Bush's hair is almost white?
To his credit, Bush didn't do this after 9/11, even though there were some--and you couldn't blame them much--who wanted to nuke Afghanistan that night.
Dotcom correctly cites Zipperhead's hubris and massive ego in trying to debate this scenario and act as if he could do something about carrying out his "proactive plan."
I'd like to change his name to Dr. Strangelove.
Let's face this if it happens.
Against that day, let's all work like hell on all fronts to make sure it never comes.
Posted by: Jen ||
05/04/2004 19:14 Comments ||
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#20
And the rest of Zenster's game - are you aware of it and supportive of that as well?
That President Bush is "shrub"?
That Gore was elected in 2000 and Bush stole the Presidency?
"Jen, only when and if he is ever properly elected will I then be grudgingly obliged to address him as you wish I would. His intentional blurring of the separation between church and state while simultaneously attempting to constitutionalize discrimination gets nothing but scorn from me.
Thank goodness we live in a country where we can disagree on this matter. Please know that you indeed have the privilege to dislike me for what I say, that is entirely your right. Understand one thing though, I don't do this to intentionally anger or offend you or anybody else.
As a proud American I cannot abide the White House's ham-fisted tampering with both the duties of executive office or our beloved constitution. Whatever proper intransigence might be shown for terrorism (as is demanded of all worthy commander in chiefs) still in no way confers any right to enshrine religious commandment as constitutional law, especially not in a nation wholly founded upon secular ideals. This is what he's attempting and my own ethicality demands that I consider it to be nothing less than malfeasance of office. Hence my scorn."
Agree with that? Can you square what you've seen him post with that? Think it makes sense and that he's being forthcoming and honest with everyone? Consider the ramifications... still think he's this rational guy? If so, hey, he's all yours. Stolen elections, shrubbery, ham-fisted unconstitutional claims and all.
#21
Oh, and Pray (if you're religious).
I do. Alot.
Posted by: Jen ||
05/04/2004 19:19 Comments ||
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#22
No jen - I don't say hit all 3. Never did.
But what if, like remote man suggests :if Al Q lit off a nuke in NYC? Lets say 2 million people were killed with another 3 million injured or poisened.
What would you do? al-Qaeda got the nukes somewhere? Who or what do you suggest we retaliate against.
Russia and China want no part of this. They only want to be around to pick up the pieces if we fail.
Fortunately, these are all hypotheticals at this point, and like you, I trust the Pres' judgment, and would not be in his shoes.
#23
Also, if Zenster is one of those who said Bush stole the election, then is he suggesting Al Gore would do anything stronger? He does have a strange defense idea for a Gore Democrat.
I am seeing his personality problems that .com was talking about.
In the anger after 9/11 and incidents like the animals hanging the dismembered bodies from the bridge in Fallujah, one wonders if there are any open moderates in the Islamic world. Only crazies and the terrified.
#24
Ed, I don't think you can safely say that China and Russia want no part of this...
Check out my story that just got posted at today's top:
China is building a 2nd nuke plant for the Pakistanis.
And the Paki nuclear program is funded by the Saudis.
If we hit SA (Mecca and Medina), there's no telling what would happen next.
All bets from the pre-9/11 world, where MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) rules prevailed, are off the table now.
One of the biggest problems with 9/11 was WHO did it?
We know it was AQ at OBL's behest with help, aid and support from a large possible list of state suspects like Iraq, Iran, and SA.
This really is a new kind of war, however.
If there is a nuke in one of our cities, we'll know it was Islamists, but which group(s)? where do they live? And were they acting on behalf of a state, too or not? Etc. Etc.
It will be a lot more than a matter of the President easily pressing a button on the football.
And the really moronic part of Zipperhead/Dr. Strangelove's whole "plan" is that these rogue states tacitly understand already --particularly by now--that they're going to get it if they're caught hitting the U.S., viz. what happened to Saddam and why Mumar Daffy Duck gave up his WMDs.
Assad of Syria hasn't thrown in the towel but he's sweating a lot
(enough to stage a fake terror attack in his own country).
And Kim of the NorKs may have been knocked off by the Chinese for saber-rattling at the US too much.
Posted by: Jen ||
05/04/2004 19:36 Comments ||
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#25
BigEd - I posted the Pacepa Interview today - now there's some solid intel on today's Russia - Pacepa knows his shit.
Zenster's take on what we will do if the asshats hit us again is nothing unique - it's merely pedantic and amazingly pointless - I sincerely doubt that the WH will drop by and borrow his punishment schedule. I have posted extensively about what I would do - and have been raked over the coals for my suggestions.
Here and here and here and especially here are well-considered and far superior musings along that line. Zenster has nothing to add to discussions of the WoT - and he's a loony to boot.
#26
BigEd - I forgot 2 things: 1) Zenster used to champion moderate Muslims and claimed they were numerous and active and wonderful and our buddies - to which I almost die laughing --and-- 2) I apologize that Jen and I swamped you with posts and links! The Zenster charade is a long-standing issue for some here and you just got caught in the middle today. Sorry for being so jumpy - he's a duplicitous and disingenuous troll, IMHO, with an intellectually dishonest position - and I shouldn't have applied any of my distrust of him to you. Apologies!
I've got to get more warm and fuzzy with where fertilizer may or may not be spread.
But - as remote man said, if Al Q lit off a nuke in NYC? or in my case, LA. . . I have to consider scenatios to get the wife and son the hell outta Dodge in a hurry. Maybe my random thoughts are colored by that.
#29
Well, all these multi-faceted details for dusting Medina and Mecca are entertaining, but are too complicated and unrealistic.
Psychopaths have no ability to empathize, so the only way you can deal with them is to let them know that they will be personally hurt when they persue certain actions which are unacceptable to you. G'daffy is a good example. We went after him with the F-111's during Reagan and killed his daugher. He got the message and got himself under some control. If he kept going, he would have got hammered much harder.
I have big problems with this cheap talk of dusting places with nukes. I have a number of friends who have worked in nuclear weapons, including designers. I have worked out at the Nevada Test Site and have spent quite a bit of time in areas where tests occurred. Nukes are not toys. You do not use them unless you have to.
Binny and Co need to realize that they will be personally hurt when they play their terrorism and attack games. They must be hunted relentlessly so that they must be always on the defensive, just like Go and Chess. They must be denied sanctuary. Right now they have Pakistan, esp the NWFP, Iran, Syria, Saudi somewhat, and sh-thole parts of Africa, plus honorable mentions in SE asia, Chechnya, and other 'stans. Denying these places to terrorists is the tough nut to crack. We have only so many military assets to go around. We have to leverage our limited assets.
We are going to have to use our brains for this one, because mainstream EU is not behind us. We must analyze the Jihadi mentality and learn to think like them, so we can be at least one step ahead of them. We must get into their heads. Much of the effort is and will be covert. This is a long-term struggle of civilizations, and our gov't should be honest about what the bottom line is.
Flashing nuclear options around is sophmoric and is basically a chicken sh-t copout.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
05/04/2004 21:31 Comments ||
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#30
Binny and Co need to realize that they will be personally hurt when they play their terrorism and attack games.
Binny and Co need to be killed. They are way past the point of realizing anything. Rather, it is their sympathizers that need to be convinced that they are not infallible.
Posted by: Rafael ||
05/04/2004 21:50 Comments ||
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#31
Rafael---Agreed. I guess I was a bit understated. I do not believe that words will accomplish as much as actions. So called religious leaders that pubically preach and advocate harm and death for the US and her citizens are fair game for an attack. Israel is doing pretty well with taking out the leaders. All you have left are ant-farm-type car swarms as an aftermath.
I also like .com's idea on the famous 40 km strip. We need to cut off Saudi's money to terrorists, which is financing the great majority of actions against us. The rest will start withering on the vine. We are going to have to be tough and we will have to carefully think it through. Going nuts just does not make it.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
05/04/2004 22:00 Comments ||
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#32
They key points at this juncture seem to be a) that islamic fanatics are incorrigible and death is the apparently the only rehabilitation available to them that gets civil society the needed results, and b) civil muslims are totally impotent to provide us an alternative to a) ... they just are NOT coming through .. not to protect us ... but to preserve their culture! I don't think they get it. Their entire culture is now on War plans somewhere I am sure, and they need to start taking it as seriuosly as we do or if a nuclear event happens, they don't deserve to keep it. We do not OWE any religious creed the right to a parisitic, violent, black hearted culture. The only way one can reasonably exist on our radar, is if they keep their pranks in their own sandbox and stay clear of us. These people are not doing so, and wholesale decimation, as described a while back on BELMONT should an attack be NBC attack be launched against us, makes perfect Darwinian senese - this is a failed culture, with no scientific reason to exist, politically correct reasons be damned.
#33
. . . wholesale decimation, as described a while back on BELMONT should an attack be NBC attack be launched against us, makes perfect Darwinian senese - this is a failed culture, with no scientific reason to exist, politically correct reasons be damned.
#34
If I sound like Zenster, who can type much better than I do, it is because I am losing my interest in "working it out" with these people. I am exasperated. I give up. Do you think we can work it out with them?
There's gotta be a way to save most of the people and get them to chuck the failed culture!
Posted by: Jen ||
05/04/2004 22:30 Comments ||
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#36
OK Jen, then if they light a bomb in NYC and take out 2 million +/-, killing how many of "most of the people" is an appropriate response? "Most of the people", in a passive/aggressive sort of way, support the jihadi culture. How many of those should we keep around, so they can support the next round of attacks? Most of them?
#37
Yep, it's Dr. Strangelove alright.
You're still crazier than a shithouse rat, Zipperhead.
We're not gonna nuke a country where most people "support the jihadi culture" just because we've been hit.
And how do we decide which country is "responsible?"
The Enemy are from lots of different countries some of which support terror, some don't.
Haven't you done any reading on this?
The Treaty of Potsdam of the 17th Century, setting out the rules of military engagement, doesn't apply anymore.
You're still operating on Potsdam rules.
You're not President! You're not even in the Cabinet.
And if you don't cease and desist with the nutty talk, I'm going to scream!
You sound like some wild-eyed militia member who wants to get his gang of "patriots" together to capture an ICBM missile silo so that you can nuke Mecca personally!
Posted by: Jen ||
05/04/2004 22:49 Comments ||
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#38
Beau, IMO, the history of past posting shows that Zenster probably has ulterior motives, and I wonder if you do too. Zenster he voices strong support (to the point of overkill) for positions obviously near and dear to many who visit this blog -- and then (here and there, thrown in as if afterthoughts) mocks Bush and the validity of his presidency, without any proof to back up the slander. Just because someone sounds pro-military doesnât mean theyâre not just a DU operative (or equivalent) out to slam Bush or try to score points by agruing the absurd. The lack of realism attached to gung ho, âpro-militaryâ solutions, certainly makes such solutions appear superficial and insincere. Please persuade me otherwise, if you think Iâm wrong. There's an old adage, "two wrongs don't make a right."
#39
I have no ulterior motives and basically am just reaching a point where I am hearing no reasonable voices, from influential people, from within the Islamic world that appear interested in working towards civil ends. I think that the fanatics have placed their culture upon a cliff's edge, and if no one within the culture is interested in reeling them back in, then why should we be? Let them fall.
BBQ'ing Americans is not acceptable. Executing
hostages is not acceptable. Flying planes into buildings is not acceptable. Killing kids eating pizza with suicide bombs is not acceptable. At present, the fanatics are creating a ever increasing list of attrocities that is just not acceptable, and the only people that seem particularly active in stopping them, is the West,
and Isreal. They are not taking convincing steps is solving their own problems. At some point, you have to begin thinking that maybe the a) they can't, as in Palestine, or b) don't want to, as perhaps, in Pakistan and Soddy.
What hopeful signals are you receiving that the Islamic culture is making progress on civilizing its masses, and particularly, its deviants? Honest question.
#40
My âhopeful signals,â as you put it, are the dead bodies and blood spilt of those Muslims the islamofascists target as âcollaboratorsâ -- whether in Palestine, Iraq, or elsewhere in the world. Hope springs eternal, perhaps, but I donât think any race is subhuman, and even monkey studies show that cultures can âresetâ and return to proactive modes. The decision has to be made to pursue positive and prosocial change, or annihilation, of islamofascist source populations. I, for one, support the policies of President Bush to seek change.
If you take "Beau's" attitude, then you basically become identical to Osama Bin Laden and the Izzoids.
Posted by: Jen ||
05/04/2004 23:22 Comments ||
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#42
Zenster is either a troll or seriously unbalanced. Thats a non-exclusive OR!
Posted by: Phil B ||
05/04/2004 23:31 Comments ||
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#43
Curious remark Jen. Self defense is too basic of a concept for you, I guess.
Anyway ... cingold,
I also think change would be best, but suspect there are incorrigible elements that will take decades to get past. Nothing new here - sort of like Rice describing the problem as being a generational one. I have hope for the next generation. I fear the current generation of islamists may press one too many buttons, however, and severely undermine the hopes of the next, mainly by getting a lot of them killed. We all know Muslims used to be good neighbors with the West with which we could have meaningful relationships. Hopefully, however it works out, that is where things will land. In the meanwhile, we need to keep killing the incorrigibles ... what choice do we have?
#44
You weren't talking self defense, you cretin.
You were talking retaliation and punitive retaliation at that.
It's clear that you haven't read the thread, not to mention the fact that you've done no outside reading of your own.
You asked us to produce info that Islamic society was capable of reform, as if this blog were here for your personal info and the rest of us are just here to fill you in.
Go suck a nukeyaler egg!
I've had it with you, Beau, Zipperhead and your personality Man Sucks Dog!
As tempting as it might be, we're not gonna haul off and nuke the whole Arab world, because that's not what the United States of America is about, so suck it up.
Posted by: Jen ||
05/04/2004 23:42 Comments ||
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#45
Curious remark Jen. Self defense is too basic of a concept for you, I guess.
Beau, your slam on Jen is uncalled for. Surely, you realize your and Zensterâs (if that makes two of you) proposals are (in common parlance) insane?
I have hope for the next generation.
Have hope for the current generation. They, too, bleed and die and hope daily for a better life. Palestine simply proves that the gentrification of entitlement, without personal responsibility and true democratic voice, always leads to thuggery. If we follow the policies of President Bush, there is much reason to hope millions more can be set free to pursue life, liberty and happiness.
We have the sword for the warring, and our right hand of friendship for the peaceful.
#46
Thanks, cingold, for putting it so well and getting my back and making President Bush's case so well.
I'm tired--this has been some day and some week.
Posted by: Jen ||
05/05/2004 0:00 Comments ||
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#47
Jen: You weren't talking self defense, you cretin.
You were talking retaliation and punitive retaliation at that.
Hate to break it to you - but if Muslim terrorists find they can get away with killing 2 million Americans without retaliation, they're going to do it again. (The Chinese are looking at asymmetrical warfare through plausibly-deniable terror attacks as a way of sticking it to Uncle Sam - the question is whether this strategy extends to helping terrorists). You're thinking about this from an American standpoint, where restraint is viewed as a virtue. America's enemies view restraint as a sign of weakness - an indication that other issues (unrelated to restraint) prevented the US from acting.
It's silly to look at this kind of thing through a partisan prism. Yes, Zenster hates Bush with a passion. But the fact is that many Americans on both sides of the aisle share the same convictions about what has to be done about the problem of Muslim extremism. The Democratic Underground is just the fringe loony left portion of the Democratic party - many Democrats would have no problem with massive retaliatory attacks after the nuclear threshold is breached in an American city.
#48
I am at a total loss as to why anything I have said is an attack on Bush. I like Bush. I hope things work out in Iraq. I think he needs to keep some serious options open as regards the remaining insurgents there, the thugs in Palestine, Iran, Syria, and for that matter, North Korea. All I am suggesting is that we too, would perhaps benefit from valuing our culture, to the point of fighting to the death for it, like they do. Why embrace a culture deadset upon our demise? Why?
#49
Hate to break it to you - but if Muslim terrorists find they can get away with killing 2 million Americans without retaliation, they're going to do it again. (The Chinese are looking at asymmetrical warfare through plausibly-deniable terror attacks as a way of sticking it to Uncle Sam - the question is whether this strategy extends to helping terrorists). You're thinking about this from an American standpoint, where restraint is viewed as a virtue. America's enemies view restraint as a sign of weakness - an indication that other issues (unrelated to restraint) prevented the US from acting.
It's silly to look at this kind of thing through a partisan prism. Yes, Zenster hates Bush with a passion. But the fact is that many Americans on both sides of the aisle share the same convictions about what has to be done about the problem of Muslim extremism.
Zhang Fei, thank you for seeing through any rhetoric (on both sides). Most everyone here is completely willing to ignore that I am (more than anything) trying to get people to examine what sort of deterrents there are to Islamist terror atrocities.
Because they are a shame/pride culture, that latter may seem paradoxical. But the reality is that we cannot win this by making them proud, for they are not a stupid people and they actually have nothing to be proud of. We can't make them proud because we can't give them anything to be proud of; they need accomplishments of their own for pride, and their culture prevents that. The only hope here is to make them so ashamed that they finally face and accept the thing they are trying to hide from in choosing to fight back: their culture is a failure, and the only way they can succeed is to discard it and change.
It may sound strange to say, but what we have to do is to take the 14th century culture of our enemies and bring it into the 17th century. Once we've done that, then we can work on bringing them into the 21st century, but that will be much easier.
But they've got to accept their own failure, personally and nationally and culturally. That is the essential first step. They've got to accept that the cause of their failure is their own culture, and that we're not. And they've got to accept that the only way to succeed is to change. That will be a difficult fight, and it's going to take decades. Along the way it's going to be necessary to remove many governments which come to power and yet again try to embrace the past and become militant, nationalistic, fundamentalist, or again attempt to try to develop nuclear weapons.
... They won't stop hating us until they become successful and begin to achieve on their own. We can't make them successful with material gifts, including aid to their poor. We can only make them successful with cultural changes, and they will resist that. Now that we've been attacked, we are ourselves compelled to force them to accept those cultural changes, because that is the only way short of actual genocide to remove the danger to ourselves. This war will end when they change, but not before. EMPHASIS ADDED
We do not have decades. If we did, I would not even be making these suggestions.
Torture, rape, mutilation and mass murder are all cruel. But everything in war is cruel. Unless you are in the situation where negotiations are pointless and you're trying to destroy the other side outright as a political entity, then as long as diplomacy continues it is the goal of war to be cruel, because what you're trying to do is to give your enemy an incentive to stop the war by giving in diplomatically.
... It's also important to note that it depends on whether they're being considered as offensive actions or as deterrents. Sometimes you have to accept that you may need to prepare to do some things as deterrents that you'd never consider doing preemptively. You may need to even consider genocide as a deterrent, which is what we did during the Cold War as part of the principle of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) in order to deter a nuclear attack against us. That amounted to "mass murder" (leaving aside the question of whether killing in war is "murder").
... in general there are a lot of kinds of acts of war that I would not consider acceptable preemptively which might be necessary to threaten, or even to actually do, reactively as a deterrent. I would not have countenanced American or British first-use of chemical weapons in Europe in WWII, but it was absolutely vital for us to have such weapons ready and for the Germans to believe that they'd be used in response to German first-use.
And that's the point of deterrence. If you simply foreswear any given tactic outright, no matter what it is, you're weakened. But if your enemy knows that you can be just as much of a vile son-of-a-bitch as he can, then he's not inclined to test you out. As with all deterrence, your willingness to engage in dirty deeds helps to protect you against those kinds of deeds.
Deterrence is not perfect; sometimes it fails. But not having it is worse yet, and to have a reasonable deterrent, your enemy must believe that you are indeed willing and able to engage in horrific savagery. He must believe that you have both the capability and the intention of doing so, otherwise you have no deterrent.
But that doesn't mean that you behave that way unilaterally, or that such things become common. What you're trying to do is paradoxical: by being willing to engage in such things, you are trying to prevent anyone from using them on either side.
But it is the nature of deterrence that you are sometimes called upon by your enemy or by circumstance to prove your determination. If you fail in such a case, all future attempts at deterrence will be weakened.
... How far back up the chain would be willing to go? Quite far, which is part of why we're going to conquer Iraq right now. One of many reasons for that is that even if there was no identifiable direct involvement between the government of Iraq and the specific group which made that attack, we need everyone who is even tangentially involved in aiding such things to be extremely nervous about it. So it is a good thing that the response be really very broad, for that makes the deterrent far stronger. In particular, we can't permit enemies to get away with "plausible deniability". We can't allow them to make the argument that "You can't prove that we were involved so you have to leave us alone." Sorry, wrong.
"... No, the problem comes from not having a proper list of gradients that are attempted with the last item being war. Even with war, there would be some gradients - military blockade all the war to the highest gradient of Nuclear response." EMPHASIS ADDED
And it is precisely a set of gradated replies that I am trying to establish. None of you nor any of .com articles do this.
... According to the doctrine, terrorist attacks are primarily designed to provoke reprisals, but guerrilla actions are directly intended to harm the enemy militarily.
However, in both cases it's common for the combatants to hide amongst civilian non-combatants when they are not directly engaged in operations against the enemy, and that is the primary way by which they nullify the enemy's superiority. They form up just prior to making an attack, and disperse afterwards and vanish into the crowd. Thus they prevent the enemy from gaining initiative; he has a stronger force but no target to attack. If he attacks civilians, that helps recruitment; if he attacks nothing, he looks weak and his morale suffers, and perhaps the enemy nation's determination and objectives may weaken.
Which is specifically I suggest examining holding Islam's shrines hostage. I do not relish advocating genocide. However, there must be a demonstrable price for noncompliance.
Few people here seem to appreciate what Zhang Fei is saying about viewpoints. No amount of American style strategy or tactics is going to provide the short term results that are so direly needed. While this does not lessen the need for victory in Iraq or the desire to neutralize Iran, neither of these address the true menace.
The first article cited by .com makes it patently clear as to exactly why there is no persuading or negotiating with Islamic terrorists. Read it again if you have any doubts. We simply DO NOT have decades to reform Islamic culture. By that time the world will be altered permanently (in the veterinarian sense).
The enemy's industrial workers are combatants in the war, and are ultimately no different than soldiers and sailors. An enemy industrial worker who helps produce artillery shells is as much of a threat to you militarily as the artillerist who fires them at your troops.
And all of the enemy's civilians are military assets. They're the ones who pay the taxes which finance the enemy's field army.
... Total War is a strategy and consequence of industrial age war, but not necessarily for information age war. Industrial wars are won through attrition, but information age warfare is the strategic equivalent of sniper fire: one bullet, one kill, and you take the most important guy down first. Information age bombing is precise and carefully planned and targeted to gain maximum effect using minimum force.
... But there are other political reasons why total war might become necessary. In theory, the enemy civilian population might become a target not because it is a military asset for the enemy, but because it is a direct strategic target. In certain extreme cases, the only way to win a war is through genocide.
Part of what we face is an implacable ideology, one rooted deeply in the past, one incompatible with the modern era, and one which finds our existence intolerable and wants us all dead. There are only two ways to defeat such an ideology: by convincing most of those who subscribe to it to change their minds, or by killing them.
If a man means to kill you, either you persuade him that he should not, or you kill him first, or you die. Sometimes you can get him locked up, but that only postpones the problem. By the same token, if an enemy political power is engaged in war with you with the goal of your destruction, you either persuade its supporters that they should not, or you kill those supporters, or you die. The international equivalent of imprisonment (diplomatic and economic sanctions) only postpones the problem.
We are engaged in a massive effort to destroy the ideology which threatens us by persuasion and coercion. We mean to eliminate the ideological threat by convincing the bulk of its supporters to abandon it. This is unprecedented and it is risky; we're on uncharted ground. To a great extent we're making this up as we go along, and that means we're making mistakes and learning-while-doing. We might not succeed.
... If our attempts to eliminate the threat through reform fail, then we face the decision to either kill them or let them kill us. It's worse than that: we would inevitably have to kill them. Once our cities begin to get nuked, we would respond massively, causing unprecedented devastation, resulting in a tragedy that it might take centuries for the world to recover from. Such attacks against us are inevitable based on the ideology that opposes us unless we surrender to it. If we refuse to surrender (and we aren't going to surrender), then the only decision we'd have would be whether we should kill huge numbers of them before or after they'd started killing huge numbers of us.
... No one wants it to come to that. That's why we must remain dedicated to fostering reform. It may be risky, and difficult, but it's still preferable to surrender, or committing genocide, or being the victims of genocide. The reason we're following the strategy we are is that it's the only way we can avoid defeat without resorting to total war. EMPHASIS ADDED
We no longer have the luxury of "making this up as we go along," or "making mistakes and learning-while-doing." We are faced with an obscene variant of total war. The Israelis have been confronting it for decades and their progress has been painstaking at best.
We must find some way to supress for once and all the threat of Islamist terror. I make no such assertion that mine are the only solutions. Far too many of you are attempting to shackle me to my suggestions.
My main intent is to find a credible deterrent, whatever it may be. We have a few very short years (if that many) to find it. Anyone who thinks otherwise is deluded.
#50
Zenster, overkill is not the answer. Your gung ho, âpro-militaryâ solutions lack the temper of realism. Donât give up on Muslims, in general. They, too, bleed and die and hope daily for a better life. Palestine simply proves that the gentrification of entitlement, without personal responsibility and true democratic voice, always leads to thuggery. If we follow the policies of President Bush, there is much reason to hope millions more can be set free to pursue life, liberty and happiness. We have the sword for the warring, and our right hand of friendship for the peaceful.
HONFLEUR, France, May 4 (AFP) - Prosecutors in northern France have launched an inquiry into last month's theft of 500 kilos (1,100 pounds) of ammonium nitrate, a fertilizer commonly used in terrorist bombs, police said Tuesday.
See, this is what you get for supporting the brutal occupation of Iraq, oh wait...
The chemical was stolen from the quayside in the northern port town, located at the mouth of the Seine river, over Easter weekend, but the theft was only discovered on Monday, police said. "A theft like this one happens frequently on the quays," sources close to the investigation said, adding that stocks of ammonium nitrate stored in the port in large quantities are not subject to any particular security measures.
I'd work on that if I was you. Don't worry about this lot, I'm sure it'll turn up, sooner or later.
Posted by: Steve ||
05/04/2004 12:34:28 PM ||
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#5
These folks are real rocket scientists (read: vote for Gore). "A theft like this one happens frequently on the quays." Yep, noooooooo problem. That is until it is used to kill hundreds of innocent people. And that they "are not subject to any particular security measures" is simply an amazing statement. I am a loss for words.
AMSTERDAM: A Dutch business associate of Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani scientist who has admitted leaking nuclear secrets, has been charged over illegal exports to Pakistan, the Dutch news agency ANP reported. The case involves the export of 20 kgs (44 lb) of a chemical which can be used to make mustard gas as well as ball bearings and other equipment, the agency said.
Well, isn't that special.
Posted by: Steve ||
05/04/2004 12:30:42 PM ||
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A Tunisian man accused of plotting bomb attacks on Jewish and U.S. targets in Germany and trying to found an Islamist terrorist organization went on trial in Berlin on Tuesday. The Federal Public Prosecutorâs Office said Ihsan Garnaoui had trained at an al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan and traveled to Germany in January 2003 to plan the attacks. ... Garnaoui asked people he knew through a Berlin mosque to help him carry out the attacks and they had agreed to help him found a group.
Garnaouiâs defense lawyer Margarete von Galen told the court there was no evidence he had stayed in Afghanistan or tried to form a terrorist group in Berlin. She said that the prosecutionâs charges against him were an "experiment." She demanded to know why, if the evidence was strong as prosecutors alleged, only Garnaoui was charged but half a dozen other participants in the alleged plot were not. ....
The prosecution said Garnaoui had planned to detonate several bombs by mobile telephone during a demonstration in the German capital at the start of the Iraq war. He was arrested on 20 March 2003, before the demonstration. ....
The trial takes place against the backdrop of a heated debate among German lawmakers over a planned immigration law. Talks on a new bill broke down at the weekend after the Greens, junior partners in the Social Democrat-led coalition, opposed wishes by the conservative opposition and Interior Minister Otto Schily to make it easier for Germany to dedeport people it believed posed a threat to society.
Posted by: Mike Sylwester ||
05/04/2004 12:15:17 PM ||
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#1
Dedeport, thats grounds for a mistrial. Whats one to do? Their hands are now tied. Try as you might, simply impossible.
MADRID, Spain (AP) - Former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar has admitted for the first time that his government failed to estimate the threat posed by Islamic extremists ahead of the March 11 terrrost attack. In a book published Monday, Aznar conceded that - because of its success fighting Basque separatist groups - his government may have lowered its guard ahead of the Madrid bombings of commuter trains that killed 191 people and wounded more than 2,000.
If it's any consolation to Aznar, we didn't pick up on 9/11. Kind of man Aznar is, it won't be any consolation.
Aznar's addresses the election defeat in his book, "Eight Years of Government: A Personal View of Spain," which was unveiled in Madrid on Monday. "Perhaps the successes achieved in the fight against ETA in recent years led us to lower our guard against the fundamentalist threat," Aznar wrote in his book's 17-page epilogue, referring to the main Basque separatist group.
"I must acknowledge, however, that Spanish public opinion was perhaps not sufficiently aware, until March 11, of the extent of the threat of Islamic terrorism, or at least not as much as it was about the threat of ETA terrorism," Aznar wrote. "If that is the case, the government undoubtedly has to bear a responsibility."
You bear it well. But your successor is going to get more of your people killed.
Posted by: Steve White ||
05/04/2004 1:45:33 AM ||
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#1
"Angel Acebes, the former interior minister and now deputy leader of the opposition People's Party, asked: "Is the interior ministry going to read thousands of sermons from priests and imams each week?"
I dare any muslim to find a priest who, in his sermons, advocates hatred and death to jews and americans. Why should the sermons of priests be scrutinize?
My God, I am so sick of these muslims saying that their religion is being misunderstood. Who gives a shit what the Koran says or does not say. What counts, you MFs muslims, are your actions and your actions spell murder and barbarism.
#6
ive got a better plan for them that would also work very well in the U.K, bulldoze the damn Mosques to the ground and build something usefull instead,there are shortages of urban parking spaces that desperatly need adressing or perhaps a nice shiney new shopping centre......
Posted by: Shep UK ||
05/04/2004 14:01 Comments ||
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Hat tip - Drudge.
French cable television station Canal Plus on Tuesday will broadcast images, stolen in Iraq, of a US army helicopter killing three Iraqis who do not appear to be posing any threat, one of whom was wounded. Anyone have a copy of this video?
The show "Merci pour lâinfo" (Thanks for the news) obtained the footage, seen by an AFP correspondent, from a "European working as a subcontractor for the US army" who left Iraq two weeks ago.
The man claims to have hidden the tape, dated December 1, 2003 and filmed at an unidentified location in Iraq, at the US base where he lived and worked.
The three-and-a-half minutes of footage were taken from the helicopter firing at the three individuals, who were considered by the US military to be suspicious.
Conversations between the helicopter pilot, the sharpshooter and their commanding officer -- who had a video link and is giving orders in real time -- can be heard on the tape.
The footage shows how the three men were killed one after the other. After the deaths of his two companions, the third attempted to hide under a truck, but was hit by helicopter gunfire.
"Got the guy right here," says the sharpshooter, as the wounded man is seen crawling on the ground.
"Good. Fire. Hit him," replies the officer.
In March, the rights watchdog group Amnesty International said "scores of civilians have been killed apparently as a result of excessive use of force by US troops, or have been shot dead in disputed circumstances." Disputed by whom? Al-J?
The broadcast also comes as the United States confronts mounting anger over the alleged abuse of coalition prisoners in Iraq and the release of photos showing US troops humiliating Iraqi detainees.
#1
Old video, what this story doesn't mention is that they had watched them hiding weapons in a field before they received permission to fire. It was on ABC and other networks some time ago.
Posted by: Steve ||
05/04/2004 14:19 Comments ||
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#2
Here is the link to ABC story: The video opens with the helicopter tracking a man in a pickup truck north of Baghdad on Dec. 1, one day after the 4th Infantry Division engaged in the bloodiest battles with Iraqi insurgents since the end of major combat. The pilots watch as the man pulls over and gets out to talk to another man waiting by a larger truck.
"Uh, big truck over here," one of the pilots is heard saying. "He's having a little powwow."
The pickup driver looks around, then reaches into his vehicle, takes out a tube-shaped object that appears to be about 4 or 5 feet long, and runs away from the road into a field. He drops the object in the field and heads back to the trucks.
"I got a guy running throwing a weapon," one of the pilots says. Retired Gen. Jack Keane, an ABCNEWS consultant who viewed the tape, said the object looked like a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, "or something larger than a rifle."
The pilots check in with their operational commander, who is monitoring the situation. When they tell him they are sure the man was carrying a weapon, he tells them: "Engage. Smoke him."
Posted by: Steve ||
05/04/2004 14:27 Comments ||
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#3
Yeah but will the full context be explained on French TV? Doubt it.
Posted by: Rafael ||
05/04/2004 14:43 Comments ||
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#4
So the French are going to use an edited video as evidence of US atrocities?
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
05/04/2004 14:52 Comments ||
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#9
Why not take the mortar tube those idiots were setting up and drop a few rounds onto Canal Plus?
Posted by: ed ||
05/04/2004 15:16 Comments ||
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#10
I think that helicopter crew has a tough question to answer: How come they didn't get all three guys on the first pass? Those bullets aren't free, you know.
Posted by: Matt ||
05/04/2004 15:23 Comments ||
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#11
Ask yourselves whay the French hate you. Answer: their minds are being poisoned day and night by dishonest media.
#14
"....Army officials acknowledged that the 30 mm cannons used by the Apache gunners were far bigger than what was needed to kill the men, but said it is the smallest weapon the Apaches have".
Good stuff. Need to know basis.
#15
JFM, wouldn't you say that it's a case of the French seeing what they want to see and what conforms to their own warped view of what Americans are "really" like?
If it were a film about Chief Wiggles distributing toys to Iraqi children or American soldiers building schools and hospitals for the Iraqs, it just wouldn't be on French TV at all.
Posted by: Jen ||
05/04/2004 15:48 Comments ||
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#16
Canal Plus is the TV station whose muppets were distilling antiamericanism on 9/12 (on 9/11 their
program had been cancelled for special news about the events).
#17
Bulldog asks "When is the coalition going to start dropping counter-propaganda leaflets over France?"
My suggestion is for US TV to show Greenpeace's "Rainbow Warrior" pulling into Le Havre and being greeted by throngs of admirers on a small flotilla of private and commercial boats. Oops! I forgot that France sank the "Rainbow Warrior" years ago. My bad.
Posted by: Tibor ||
05/04/2004 16:00 Comments ||
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By the way, the unit that did that is right next door to me. I also fly the same aircraft over here so here's the real story. The weapon they're dropping in the field is a shoulder fired heat seeking missile. There were serveral more found in the vehicle along with RPG's. This is the same weapon that took down a Chinook a few months ago and killed 31 soldiers. The Apaches were blacked out (no lights on) so that's why the terroists thought the had a chance to ditch the weapons and get away with it. They had been followed for some time and ground units were enroute, however when you see someone go for one of the only weapons that can take out your 40 million dollar helicopter along with you, you pull the trigger. Although I wouldn't hand out a tape like that, they completely did the right thing.
Posted by: ed ||
05/04/2004 16:04 Comments ||
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#19
Ed, I am not a gunship pilot but as soon as I saw them unloading a tubilar weapons that looked like an RPG and they were in a restricted area I would feel mor than comfortable pulling the trigger on them. That guy let them live longer than I would have, MUCH longer. It would be nice to have the ground pounders capture/interrogate them but once they started unloading all bets are off. BTW I was never taught how to arrest the enemy on the battlefield!
#22
Sarge, I am not a pilot either. The pilot's comment is from the link. BTW, I think the helicopter pilots would have an even harder time trying to arrest anybody.
Posted by: ed ||
05/04/2004 16:30 Comments ||
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#23
The real story is that the French media weasels represent this as some kind of new revelation when in fact that tape has been shown all over the world and the internet for months.
What's the mating call of the Euro-media? Goebbel-goebbel.
It is difficult to say. There has ever been some roots of antiamericanism in France (it became a force during your Civil War) but except for the far left it was not heinous, however with the building of the EU the centrists and moderate left who were more or less friendly (or not overly hostile) became enthused with trhe idea of an EU challenging the US. At the same time people were unhappy about conceding France's money to Francfort and giving power to unelected powers in Brussels. It was at this point that antiamericanism in the media became really agressive, my theory being that the French elites needed a big bad wolf to hose the EU into the throats of French citizens. The news is that while antiamericanism was mostly a parisian phenomena, latest polls show that differnce between Paris and rest of France has drastically dwindled, I think that this is due to non-parisian papers being bought by parisian groups.
In the weeks who followed 9/11 there was a recess. The best example was that the General Secretary of the Communist Party calling for a minute of silence a few weeks later (many communists were unhappy about it, but it was still a symbol). Then quite soon, antiamericanism in the media returned far more violent than ever as if the elites felt they had to retain control. But in the muppet show of Canal Plus there no three weeks lull, they were spreading hate on 9/12.
There are a good nimeber of people in France who are still friends to America but mediatic pressure is so strong that it is about as difficult to say it in public than having a KKK bumperstick. A number of them confessed their "sin" to me but it was ever a face-to-face, no witness talk.
However if you need the New York Time or CNN dishonest and manipulative wait to see the french press.
#25
JFM, I can imagine--having lived and visited France several times.
The language difference doesn't help things.
I just ordered a book on the "French problem" and there's another one coming out this summer.
I am desperately trying to understand what the deep divide between our 2 countries is about and if France can be "saved," because I think the road they're going down is perilous for them more even than for America.
Posted by: Jen ||
05/04/2004 17:04 Comments ||
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#26
Jen
I would recommend you Jean Francois Revel's book "Antimericanism". It has been published in English. It is from a French writing for French and dispelling myths or refuting calumnias about America so you get a kind of insider view.
First problem in France is: Most schools belong to state and thus people wanting to be teachers (and being able to mold young minds) are likely to be left wing.
Second problem: journal "Le Monde" adquired an enormous credibility capital from its creation in 1944. Today it has fallen into the hands of a band of ex-trotskists (well, they are supposed to be ex-trotskists) and "Le Monde" no longer deserves its reputation but inertia makes people continue buying it and inertia plus a part of threats and networking make it remain central to
the French media (ie TVs take it as reference when making the TV news).
Third problem: All the failed singers and makers of movies without spectators need the public accepting to pay taxes in order to preserve French culture against the eeeeeeevil American productions.
Fourth: An unfortunate tradition dating from the Affaire Dreyfus of militantic journalism: journalist doesn't report facts and let public judge instead he actively tries to persuade it even if it means distorting or hiding facts.
Solution: Disembark in Normandy, JDAM "Le Monde", fire most of the teachers and de-indoctrinate the French. You see, once you reeducate him, a French can make a passable American. After all the quintessential redneck was a such Lejeune. ;-)
#27
Interesting observations, JFM--Merci!
I have Revel's book and have read most of it.
It told me alot about how the French think about America, but there are still some gaps...
so I am looking forward to these next 2 books.
Of course, there is always the old French romantic love of Communisme, as well, which explains a lot.
That and a deep sense of national shame about both Vichy and their behavior in their colonies like Algeria for which they feel collective guilt.
France is a very complex, complicated country.
Mais, au fond, j'en ai mars! LOL! Assez!
Posted by: Jen ||
05/04/2004 17:49 Comments ||
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#28
I am desperately trying to understand what the deep divide between our 2 countries is
Jen, the deep divide can be traced to the foundation of America and modern France. Today's France is a continuation of Napoleonic times. Napoleon Bonaparte incrementally garnered power for himself, eventually making himself "emperor", and ultimately creating a ruling elite. Chiraq, for example, is an extension of this elite.
America took a different route: power is balanced and not concentrated, and big government is generally looked down upon. It seems, from very early on the two countries embarked on diverging paths. In my opinion, it will only get worse.
Posted by: Rafael ||
05/04/2004 17:54 Comments ||
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#29
Some interesting books you might be interested in:
DANGEROUS DE-LIAISONS
By Jean-Marie Colombani and Walter Wells
THE FRENCH BETRAYAL OF AMERICA
By Kenneth R. Timmerman
"In Dangerous De-Liaisons ... Wells engages in a sophisticated back-and-forth dialogue with Jean-Marie Colombani, editor-in-chief of Le Monde."Source.
Posted by: Rafael ||
05/04/2004 18:06 Comments ||
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#30
Who's the next country on our list for tonight? I'm saying let's take on NorWay! Yes!
#31
Besides the obvious biases of the French Left, still humiliated at the defeat of their allies in the Cold War, there is a substantial though more subtle strain of anti-Americanism on the French Right.
Some of this is residue of the millenium old conflict with Britain, in which the French have normally been the losers despite their initial success at Hastings.
In this long view, the US is simply a monstrous extension of Albion Perfide.
There is also a more modern tradition of resentment that began with the Eisenhower administration's refusal to intervene on behalf of the besieged French army at Dien Bien Phu in 1954.
Later, in 1956, the US joined the Soviet enemy in forcing a humiliating withdrawal on the combined Anglo-French forces after their invasion of the Suez Canal Zone.
To many in France, this was a signal of American support for Arab nationalism and a crucial boost for the Algerian rebels just as French forces were getting a grip on them.
There was also resentment at the Anglo-American nuclear monopoly in NATO, enhanced by the perception that the US was unreliable, and soon broken for nationalistic reasons.
This established habits of thought that may well explain the lack of pro-American sentiment on the political right in France and its consequent failure to mount an effective resistance to the Islamo-Red alliance that is quickly devouring French society.
Calls for a withdrawal from Iraq are starting to pop up all over the place now and will proliferate in the coming days and weeks. I find even the administrationâs strongest supporters, including fervent advocates of the war a year ago and even some who could be labeled "neoconservatives," now despairing and looking for an exit.
They donât put quite that way, of course. Instead, they say that seeking democracy in Iraq is too ambitious; we need to lower our sights and settle for stability. But this is probably just a way station on the road to calling for withdrawal, for it ought to be clear that even establishing stability in Iraq will require a continued American military occupation and continued casualties for quite some time to come.
Faced with that reality, conservatives and even neoconservatives can be heard muttering these days that if the Iraqis wonât take responsibility for their own country, we should leave them to their fate. That is what "lowering our sights" really means.
John Kerry and his advisers moved to this stance a couple of weeks ago when they declared that the goal of democracy was "too heroic" and the United States should limit itself to seeking "stability." Since then Kerry has held firm. Itâs not inconceivable, though, that he may gradually abandon this rhetoric and begin running openly as the candidate who will get the United States out of the Iraq quagmire, under the guise of handing it off to NATO or the United Nations. That could soon seem a better political strategy. Few Americans will believe that Kerry can really do a better job of fighting the war than President Bush. But he can plausibly present himself as the candidate most likely to get the United States out of Iraq, if a majority of Americans decide they want that.
So get ready for the coming national debate over withdrawal. The unthinkable is becoming thinkable. And it isnât hard to understand why.
All but the most blindly devoted Bush supporters can see that Bush administration officials have no clue about what to do in Iraq tomorrow, much less a month from now. Consider Fallujah: One week theyâre setting deadlines and threatening offensives; the next week theyâre pulling back. The latest plan, naming one of Saddam Husseinâs Republican Guard generals to lead the pacification of the city, is the kind of bizarre idea that only desperate people can conjure. The Bush administration is evidently in a panic, and this panic is being conveyed to the American people.
Events in Fallujah have also conveyed another impression: The administration is increasingly reluctant to fight the people it defines as the bad guys in Iraq. This reluctance is perfectly understandable. No one wants more American casualties. And no one doubts that more violence in Iraq may alienate more of the Iraqi population. But this reluctance can also appear both to Iraqis and to the American public as a sign of declining will. Among the many lessons of Vietnam is that American support for that war remained remarkably steady, despite high American casualties, until Americans began to sense that their government was no longer committed to what had been defined as victory and was looking for a way out. If Americans see signs of wavering by the Bush administration -- and Fallujah may be one of those signs -- support for the war could decline sharply.
It is the sense that Bush officials donât know what they are doing that has fed all the new talk about "lowering our sights." No one will say, "Letâs cut and run." Instead, people talk about installing a moderate but not democratic government. They talk about letting Iraq break up into three parts: Kurd, Shiite and Sunni. But at the core, this is happy talk, designed to help us avert our eyes from withdrawalâs real consequences. The choice in Iraq is not between democracy and stability. It is between democratic stability, on the one hand, and civil conflict, chaos or brutal, totalitarian dictatorship and terrorism, on the other.
The next time someone suggests that the goal of democracy is too ambitious, let him explain in detail what alternative he has in mind. Even if we wanted to establish a non-democratic government in Iraq, how would we do it? Is there a benevolent dictator out there who could enjoy sufficient legitimacy or wield sufficient power to maintain stability in Iraq without continued U.S. military support? Even a reconstituted, Sunni-dominated Iraqi army -- if such a thing were even desirable or possible -- could not impose order without employing all of the Hussein regimeâs brutal tactics, including the inevitable massacre of probably thousands of rebellious Shiites. Is that what advocates of "lowering our sights" have in mind?
Nor would partition be any easier to engineer. Yes, there could be an independent Kurdistan (and an ensuing war with Turkey) in the north. But the Shiites and Sunnis in Iraq are neither geographically nor culturally separate. They are intermingled. So, does partition mean transfers of population? And who would carry out those transfers, and how? Again, people who call for partition as an alternative to Iraqi democracy should explain exactly what their plan would look like and how it would produce a more stable result.
The truth is, if the goal is stability, that the alternatives are no easier to carry out and no less costly in money and lives than the present attempt to create some form of democracy in Iraq. The real alternative to the present course is not stability at all but to abandon Iraq to whatever horrible fate awaits it: chaos, civil war, brutal tyranny, terrorism or more likely a combination of all of these -- with all that entails for Iraqis, the Middle East and American interests.
That is what President Bush has been saying all along. But Bush himself is the great mystery in this mounting debacle. His commitment to stay the course in Iraq seems utterly genuine. Yet he continues to tolerate policymakers, military advisers and a dysfunctional policymaking apparatus that are making the achievement of his goals less and less likely. He does not seem to demand better answers, or any answers, from those who serve him. Itâs not even clear that he understands how bad the situation in Iraq is or how close he is to losing public support for the war, a support that once lost may be impossible to regain. Bush politicos may take comfort from polls that show the public still trusts Bush more than Kerry when it comes to conducting the war. That wonât be worth much, however, if the public turns against the war itself. The tragedy may be that Bush will not understand until it is too late. In which case we will lose in Iraq, and the dire consequences that he has rightly warned of will be upon us.
#1
Blah blah blah 'quagmire' blah blah blah 'neocons'...blah blah. What tripe. The Post would love nothing better than to see the US pullout of Iraq, and they have been doing their best to undermine any good news coming from there. They might as well change their name to the Washington Post-Jazeera.
Posted by: Rex Mundi ||
05/04/2004 12:28 Comments ||
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#2
Wow. Once again, in the classic double-speak so prevalent in the press, WaPo plays up what it reports as fact, poses shooting-gallery bear questions, oredicts without any sense of irony future negative reporting, and editorializes answers that pose more questions, for tomorrow's editorializing - especially the Big Doubts that anyone knows anything. Manufactured Big Doubts serve one purpose when posed by these cretins: to reflect negatively on those in authority. Remarkably, and this is the real magic of their craft, Big Doubts never harm the press or the opposition - no, of course not... it seeds the next round.
A wordsmithing thing of beauty. Self-contained, neatly bundled in the middle but with messy skeery pointy things - things meant to undermine confidence - poking out of both ends. That they miss the boat and get their reporting wrong an amazingly high percentage of the time doesn't phase them, doesn't invoke the shame that comes for the Avg Joe when he screws up. No, indeed, they project their errors onto authority and call it confusion and mixed messages. Truly artful-dodger stuff.
Bravo, WaPo! You have "elevated" disingenuos agenda-mongering to a new low. Now FOAD - the filtering process needed to glean the facts and toss the agenda is just not worth the effort required of your drivel anymore.
"I think calls for ignoring WaPo and its ilk are starting to pop up all over the place now and will proliferate in the coming days and weeks. I find even the professionâs strongest supporters, including fervent advocates of the J-School model a year ago and even some who could be labeled "subscribers," now despairing and looking for an exit."
#3
Strategy and tactics. Never confuse one with the other.
We have two minor problems in Iraq, both fully contained at this time, Fallujah and Sadr.
As has been noted here before, the enemy in Fallujah is confined to the northwest quarter of the city and is surrounded by our Marines.. It will occur to these guys very shortly that they have gained nothing. Iraqis taking over for Marines just means more Marines available for combat. We are in no hurry. Classic seiges have taken years. This one won't take that long, and every day that our Marines aren't dying in house to house combat is a good day.
Sadr continues to throw men against our forces in Najef and they keep dying for no purpose. Reports from inside the city show increased impatience with his thugs. Again, time is on our side.
Bremer continues to roll out Iraqi government ministries, utilities and infrastructure repairs continue nationwide, and nearly all of the 23 million Iraqis are day by day seeing a better life. Most Iraqis want us to leave, and that is both understandable and our strategy. Most Iraiqs want us to help them become safer, and that is both understandable and our strategy, as well. These things take time.
Conservatives are beginning to sound like libs in one respect. Refusing to engage in fighting on the enemy's terms is being seen as lack of planning and failure of will. What has actually been happening is an adaptive strategy, based on making changes as the situation demands. Strategy dictates tactics, not the other way around. Our primary goal is to return Fallujah and Najef to the control of the central government. We are, slowly but surely, doing so. We are not in Iraq to kill Iraqis, nor to take some sort of revenge, nor to profit from a conquest. We make mistakes, and adapt because of them.
The world, Rantburg included, is watching all this in real time. Life doesn't operate in real time. Everything we do plays out and the results are not immediately seen. Many people seem to expect results in days that will take months or years. Lack of immediate results does not indicate the lack of a plan, nor the failure of a plan.
The President has been clear that this process will take time, an undetermined amount of time. The military has always said that they expected our losses to mount as June 30 approached. The Liberation of Iraq is an on-going strategy that is proceeding in stages and will continue in that manner.
#4
With American forces in an independent Kurdisylvania would a war with Turkey really be in the making?
I'm thinking not.
But I agree with most of the post. I also think that Americans are not cowed by the bad press regarding the prison soft porn show. As compared to what they know about the barbarity of the enemy. G43, take out the guys standing up to you. Do it now. A new news cycle will put it as past history in days! And Americans, regular Joes and Janes, will be happy to see it. Lets go for the win.
Thinking about tieing a stray cat, thats been hanging around lately, to the bumper of my car and drag the evil thing around the block. Would that be a hoot? Shouting God is great!
#5
We're nowhere near losing on the ground. At home is a bit more precarious, but only because of alarmist editorials like this. But WaPo is right to criticize those on the right who are already jumping the shark (Pipes, NRO, etc.).
#6
someone: But WaPo is right to criticize those on the right who are already jumping the shark (Pipes, NRO, etc.).
Something less than full democracy is acceptable, as long as the new government is pro-American. This is a lot like what happened in Korea, Taiwan and a host of other countries during the Cold War. If full democracy isn't practical initially, we can wait for a few decades. The alternative to full democracy isn't necessarily the kleptocracies of the Mid East. With continuous pressure applied by the US to an Iraqi who is essentially pro-American, Iraq could take putter along as an authoritarian state for decades (like Korea and Taiwan) until it becomes a full democracy. The vital objective shouldn't be democratic rule - it should be selecting a ruler who is capable *and* pro-American to administer Iraq until democratic rule becomes possible.
#7
I'm 'membered of a phrase I read in a book about the other quagmire.
To paraphrase, the war was not lost in the air over North Vietnam nor in by the grunts in the jungles in the south. The war was lost in the hearts and minds of the American people. It was their choice.
Posted by: Michael ||
05/04/2004 16:12 Comments ||
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#8
Chuck, great comment. I could not agree more. The micro-level of information that we receive is getting too many people to focus only on the negative. Yes, there are stumbles, and yes there are costs. But that has been the case in all of the conflicts we have engaged in. GW needs to kick a few State Dept butts, cut some red tape and make it clear to the American people that Iraq has not stopped because of isolated situations in Fallujah and Najaf. Remember, it is always darkest before the dawn and dawn is not coming for a while yet.
Posted by: remote man ||
05/04/2004 16:14 Comments ||
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#9
The choice in Iraq is not between democracy and stability. It is between democratic stability, on the one hand, and civil conflict, chaos or brutal, totalitarian dictatorship and terrorism, on the other.
This is largely a reply to George Wills running series of columns. And I think it may well be true. Leaving aside the very different global political situations, I dont know that theres anyone in Iraq who could do what Chiang did in Taiwan. Who is the Chiang of Iraq, and what organization in Iraq is the KMT?
#10
Liberalhawk -
George Will is usually pretty good, but I found the column today linked on realclearpolitics.com somewhat disjointed. Will is not like himself recently. I don't understand it.
#11
Biged - From my point of view GW makes sense. See ive always agreed with Paul Berman and Chris Hitchens that spreading democracy in the Mideast IS at bottom a liberal policy. Even if I have to keep hitting my head against the wall with radicals who cant see it cause they hate the US, and more moderate liberals who cant see it cause they hate Bush, and dislike the neocons for other reasons. In the same way I think there are a lot of paleoconservatives who wont see the same thing, out of their love for Dubya, or out of their visceral hatred for the left, the UN, the Euros, etc. Will is just calling it as he sees it. I think hes wrong, but its in charecter - hes never really been a neocon, though hes closer to them than alot of other paleocons - and its not inconsistent with what hes said since the Iraq debate began - or for that matter with what he said about Kosovo, or about nation building in general during the Clinton years.
Separatist rebels in the war-torn province pf Aceh denied Tuesday that they had played any role in last week's fighting between Muslim militants and government forces in southern Thailand.
Thai authorities have said they are investigating whether some of the militants were from Aceh.
Bakthiar Abdullah, a spokesman for the Free Aceh Movement (GAM), said the group had never taken part in any military action outside Aceh, and that none of its member had been involved in the Muslim insurgents' attacks on Thai military posts.
"We have our own problems in our homeland," he said in a telephone interview from Stockholm, Sweden, where his group maintains a government-in-exile. "Why we should intervene in the problems of other regions, including southern Thailand?"
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
05/04/2004 1:26:46 PM ||
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A bomb at a grocery store killed two people and injured four in the Indonesian city of Pekanbaru, the same day a terror trial began in the city on Sumatra island. Police said the bomb contained high explosives including RDX, which was also used in the Marriott and Bali blasts. Asked if it was a terrorist attack, Riau provincial police spokesman S. Pandiangan said: "We're investigating. Our preliminary finding shows that device contained C4, RDX and nitrate. They are high explosives." The store, at the end of a row of two-storey buildings, collapsed upon itself in the explosion which also damaged an adjoining multi-level marketing company. Two maids working for the shopowner were killed. One of them was found beneath debris more than one hour after the explosion. The shopowner, named Along, was seriously hurt but his wife Yuliana and one of their children were only slightly injured. Police said they are Buddhists. "He is not conscious yet," Yuliana told AFP from her husband's bedside. She said his entire body had been crushed by debris, but declined to answer further questions. "I feel dizzy," she said.
Pandiangan said police also found a seriously injured man about 30 meters (100 feet) away from the site of the blast. "We have not yet been able to identify this Mr. X because he is still in critical condition," he said. Hospital workers told AFP the man was about 30 years old and was unconscious with a burn wound to his mouth. Pandiangan declined to say whether he might have been linked to the bombing. Riswan, a local resident quoted by the state Antara news agency, said: "I was nearly 60 meters from the scene. I thought there'd been an earthquake, but after a few moments I heard someone shouting for help. I went to the scene and saw that shophouse smashed to smithereens."
Riau provincial police chief Brigadier General Deddy Komaruddin said police could not yet determine whether the bombing was linked to the trial of Zuflius bin Yunus -- also known as Datuk Rajo Ameh or Muchtar Tanjung -- which began Tuesday in Pekanbaru. "At this moment our team is still working hard to solve this case," the police chief said. Yunus is accused of involvement in the bombing of a Protestant church in Pekanbaru on Christmas Eve 2000. The blast, which seriously damaged the church and about 10 surrounding buildings, left five dead and 21 injured. The prosecutor also accused Yunus of having stored chemicals used to build bombs at his home and at another building he owned. Chief Judge Zahrul Rabani adjourned the trial until May 12 to hear the defence plea.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
05/04/2004 1:24:51 PM ||
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Thailand appointed an independent commission on Tuesday to investigate last week's shootout at a southern mosque that left more than 30 Muslim militants dead and relations with neighboring Malaysia severely bruised. As a top-ranking Kuala Lumpur delegation met Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra to stress good relations after last Wednesday's violence, Bangkok said the seven-member commission, made up mostly of Muslim judges, lawyers and academics, would question police, security officials and witnesses to the clash. "Even though this incident was unavoidable, the government wants related facts to be established by people knowledgeable in gathering information, religion, and foreign relations," spokesman Jakrapob Penkair told reporters. The general in charge has defended using rocket-propelled grenades and other heavy weapons to end the siege, saying he feared his soldiers would be attacked by an angry mob. However, both local Muslims and those across the nearby border in Malaysia have expressed outrage.
Of course, they'd have done that regardless of what the army did, to include doing nothing...
Mystery still surrounds the machete-wielding attackers, who launched a series of dawn raids on army and police posts across Thailand's restive and predominantly Muslim deep south, home to a separatist rebellion in the 1970s and 1980s. The government says they were drug-crazed youths manipulated by local holy men criminals. Analysts say the attacks look more like a revival of a centuries-old Muslim insurgency with a dream of a distinct Islamic state between Thailand and Malaysia. However, police have started to zero in on several slain militants whose bodies remained unclaimed, leading investigators to conclude they might have been foreign fighters. "So far there are three unknown bodies," a police investigator, who declined to be identified, told Reuters. "We suspect that these three bodies are non-Thais."
Malays and Indons, I'd guess...
In response to the Pattani violence, Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi offered temporary refuge to Thais fleeing the violence, prompting behind-the-scenes diplomatic anger from Bangkok and Tuesday's hastily arranged meeting. Both countries are founder members of the Association of South East Asian Nations, a regional grouping whose watchword is non-interference in one another's affairs. After Thaksin met Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak, Thai officials glossed over differences of opinion. "Malaysia made it clear that it will leave to Thailand to solve its own problems and Thailand can expect consistent moral support from Malaysia," government spokesman Jakrapob Penkair told reporters. "Our bilateral relations are very good."
Besides which, Malaysia's only a step or two away from similar problems. Remember the Islamists lost big in the elections...
A Malaysian official said Kuala Lumpur had no intention to meddle and pledged to help track down those behind the attacks. "We will not support and give protection to religious extremists militants and other criminals," said the official, who declined to be identified. Thaksin, who will head to the three troubled southernmost provinces on Thursday for a three day visit, said earlier the violence could undermine economic growth targets in 2004. "We will do our best. But if it is something beyond our control, then there's not much we could do. There are still many months to go," he told reporters.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
05/04/2004 1:21:52 PM ||
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#1
Who needs a probe? I sense the zionist entity at work here!
__________borgboy writing in the subjunctive
#1
I've read about half of Pacepa's first book. A lot of what he says matches what really happened or what HAS happened, which really supports his authenticity. The most damning was his assessment that the PLO could never become a functional government.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
05/04/2004 12:36 Comments ||
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#2
He pointed to the red flags pinned onto a world map hanging on his wall. âLook at that,â he said. Each flag represented a plane that had been downed. âAirplane hijacking is my own invention,â he boasted.
Is anyone really paying attenton to this braggart Sakharovskiy, and how much influence his procedures have today???
Well, that's certainly unusual...
YELWA, Nigeria Hundreds of Muslims were killed by Christian militiamen in the latest outbreak of ethnic fighting, a senior police officer said Tuesday. Mutilated and charred bodies still remained in the main street of Yelwa, a remote market town in central Nigeria. The police had previously reported 67 bodies recovered from the massacre, which occurred on Sunday and Monday. Thousands of Muslims lined the roadside chanting religious slogans and vowing revenge, a witness said. The conflict is rooted in competing claims between the Christian Taroks and Muslim Fulanis over the fertile farmland of central Nigeria, Africaâs most populous nation.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
05/04/2004 22:37 Comments ||
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#4
There was an article in the Atlantic a while back noting the rise and rapid growth of Christianity in the southern hemisphere. Gonna be an interesting few decades, folks.
#8
I really, really, really should feel bad about this.
But I can't.
Is that wrong?
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
05/04/2004 23:02 Comments ||
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#9
Works for me, too!
Move over. LOL
Posted by: Jen ||
05/04/2004 23:04 Comments ||
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#10
Has anybody ever read an Al-Reuters' Headline saying Muslims Massacre Hundreds of Christians?
When it is muslims doing the massacring, Al-Reuters always describes it as ethnic/religious fighting. Hypocrites!
Soldiers from 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, killed two attackers, detained five suspects wanted for anti-Coalition activities, and captured and destroyed weapons during separate incidents in Northern Iraq May 3. In the first incident, Coalition Soldiers in a 1st Battalion, 37th Field Artillery Regiment convoy in southeast Mosul observed two people hiding near the road. Seconds later, as the convoy passed, an improvised explosive device detonated. The patrol fired at the men, killing them. A search of the bodies turned up an IED-initiating device in the hand of one of the men. A Stryker vehicle suffered minor damage during the attack. In another incident, Soldiers from 5th Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment conducted a raid in Hammam al Alil, detaining three people wanted for anti-Coalition activities. The suspects were taken to a Coalition detention facility for questioning.
Soldiers from 1st Squadron, 14th Cavalry detained another two suspected arms dealers during a raid in Bulavi. A search of their residence turned up one 105mm tank round, three 130mm artillery rounds, one 107mm rocket, 17 fuses, seven 82mm mortar rounds, 10 60mm mortar rounds and several unidentified rounds. Soldiers of the same unit were approached in Tall Afar by a citizen who led them to a cache of weapons that included 17 60mm mortar rounds, 150 50 caliber rounds and 112 mortar fuses. Finally, an IED was discovered and destroyed by Soldiers of 1st Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment after they noticed two fiberglass tubes attached to alarm clocks and a detonation cord lying near a road five kilometers north of Hammam Al Ali.
Reservoirs of oil potentially worth some $6 billion reportedly were discovered in central Israel. The reservoirs might contain 980 million barrels worth of oil at a site east of Kfar Saba, according to findings of a geological survey released Tuesday by the exploration company Givot Olam. It was not yet clear how much, if any, of the oil would be extricable from the deep underground deposits. The company also has claimed in the past to have made major oil finds but has not succeeded in extracting the oil.
Posted by: Mike Sylwester ||
05/04/2004 8:18:58 PM ||
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#1
Ummmmm, how about FU?
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/04/2004 20:29 Comments ||
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#2
So much for that old joke about the Israelites having to wander in the desert for 40 years before they found a place without any oil.
#3
I understand there is a lot of deep oil that we don't currently have the technology to recover. Maybe the Israelis will put their brainpower to work to solve this problem, as they have several others.
Posted by: Phil B ||
05/04/2004 21:20 Comments ||
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#5
It's gotta be economical (or, if Saudi or Venezuela shut off their spigots - in the national security interest) to drill so expensively
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/04/2004 22:11 Comments ||
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#6
High crude oil prices will be an incentive. World demand is heavy and rising.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
05/04/2004 22:17 Comments ||
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#7
If the Israelis do figure out how to recover that oil, the same technology can be used in the US to recover hundreds of billions of barrels in deep resevoirs.
However, many companies here have been working at the deep recovery for a long, long time and only made incremental progress.
Without any provocation on the part of the Christian population, Shiâite and Sunni Arabs alike had begun targeting Christians of all ages for killing, beating, robbing, and raping. The story is a familiar one for the dwindling Christian minority. Every time an invasion or military incursion occurs, particularly by the "Christian" West, Iraqi Christians are blamed and must pay. Never mind that other Muslim parties invited the American invasion or cooperated fully with it, it is the Christian Iraqi population that must pay. And pay they have and will continue to do so.
For the first time in recent history, Christians were ordered not to celebrate Christmas and did not do so at night. When I [Robert W. DeKelaita, an immigration attorney representing asylum seekers] visited Baghdad, I was informed of scores of incidents of kidnappings and threats against Iraqi Christian families which had stunned and frightened the population. It has become a common rule that Christian women, particularly young or attractive ones, should remain indoors. I sensed this feeling throughout Iraq among the ChaldoAssyrians.
Iraq âs cities are full of fear for the ChaldoAssyrians. Even under Saddam Husseinâs time, the Assyrian New Year was celebrated in the northern zone with a procession of about 30,000 people. There was none this April for fear of some sort of retaliation. Churches have been continually warned not to conduct normal services and to keep their hymns quiet. Women have been warned to wear the veil and to honor Islamic codes. Priests and bishops now hide their crosses and do not dare seek the assistance of the American troops for brining on further trouble. Women have been raped and children kidnapped.
In their traditional villages around the ancient Nineveh plains, the ChaldoAssyrians are pressured to accommodate Arabs who are victimized by the newly invigorated Kurds. The ChaldoAssyrian must accept into their villages these Arabs, many of whom are Wahabists who detest Christians. Further north, Kurds have continued to confiscate Assyrian lands right under the noses of the liberating American troops. The Kurds are, after all, victims of Saddam and must be accommodated even at the expense of a dying community. The lawlessness is orchestrated by a majority against a minority, a scapegoat in every sense of the word.
To add to the pains of the Christians, Islam has taken a prominent role in the new Iraq with little objection from the beleaguered Bush administration. Under siege from various forces in Iraq , some thought to be foreign; the U.S. simply uses overwhelming force and waits for the political and military results. The social and cultural results from such actions, however, are the creation of further hatred and loathing for the ChaldoAssyrians, who are unarmed and vulnerable, and if history contains any indication, ripe for massacres. ....
Posted by: Mike Sylwester ||
05/04/2004 8:15:40 PM ||
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#1
No suprise here! Same thing happened/ing in Indonesia, Paleostan, Lebanon, Sudan, etc.
I guess the Left will only take notice when it starts happening in Paris, London, Munich, Detroit, etc.
Posted by: Phil B ||
05/04/2004 20:29 Comments ||
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#2
Phil B - Isn't it already happening in those places?
London - The post by "Another Dan"
Paris - They'll always have Paris.
Detroit - Mosques have flexed power.
Munich - Don't know about Munich. Anybody?
From Jihad Unspun
In early September, 2003, JUS [Jihad Unspun] received from an anonymous source, a series of disturbing photographs of three US soldiers sexually violating what appears to be a young Iraqi girl. The photographs are not computer generated and at first pass appear to be authentic. The girl in the picture appears to be wearing authentic Shia dress, the surroundings are similar to that found in Iraq and the quality of the photos are poor suggesting that they were taken using amateur equipment and then faxed or scanned resulting in low resolution. [Later] we received yet another grouping of photographs, also from an anonymous source.
The second set of photographs appeared to be the work of pornographers. The characters in the photographs are more âstagedâ and the âsoldiersâ appear with their faces blackened. As we endeavored to source out this second set, we discovered not one but several pornographic sites that boasted giving the âIraqi bitches what they deservedâ and these sites had similar âsoldiersâ in camouflage. We decided not to publish them at that time as we have not enough information to be able to legitimize the photographs.
In January 2004, we received information that tipped us off to what was really going on. We were told by an anonymous source that the wifes, sisters and daughters of those arrested by US forces, British forces and the hired mercenaries that are so often overlooked were being used to âsoften upâ detainees in Iraq. Either the male relatives cooperated with interrogators they were threatened with their female family members ended up on porn sites. If the detainee was not forthcoming, this is what occurred and the photographs were presented to him.
While we had a far amount of information we still could not place a time date or location on the photos and therefore we could not publish them. We did however submit them to the humanitarian organizations with no reply and made a further call on our site for information.
Not even "humanitarian organizations" were willing to suspend quite that much disbelief...
Since the prisoner abuse allocations have now surfaced and these photographs are saturating the Arab world, we publish them here today in an effort that our viewers will help us to confirm, beyond a shadow of a doubt, who the perpetrators are of this horrific abuse.
Here is what we do know:
⢠On June 9th, an the Iraqi newspaper As-Saah charged that 18 US soldiers raped two Iraqi girls aged 14 and 15, a claim of course denied by the US military. One of the girls was subsequently killed by her family for the shame that this act caused.
The "newpaper" subsequently admitted it wasn't true...
[Various reports of increased rape in Iraq, no allegation of Americansâ participation. Reports of rapes by US troops in Okinawa, Japan and Vietnam. Reports of rape at the USAF Academy.]
⢠There have been numerous underground news items and reports in the past months that make further allegations that US soldiers are not only raping the country but raping the Iraqi woman as well. None of these claims have been validated, until possibly now. ....
If the photos can be validated, we will rigorously honor-kill the victims pursue justice through terrorist bombings of civilians the appropriate agencies. If they are the work of pornographers this is a clear sign of our own gullability the lack of morals in the West and the individuals responsible should be brought to justice for hate crimes, distributing pornography and for acts of yanking Jihad Unspunâs chain racism. We will endeavor to do that also. Either way, they are another gross insult to Arab honor that is still stingy stingy? from the other abuses that have come to light.
Posted by: Mike Sylwester ||
05/04/2004 7:52:56 PM ||
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#2
Kill bad guys? Sorry, not sure of much and privy to nothing! I think he also said another city, prolly Kut, was also seeing action between Madhi dinks and Marines.
#4
sludj, I don't think we've backed off Fallujah--Check out Belmont Club for the latest.
As of this morning, he said that the Marines had the bad guys boxed up in the NE corner of Falluja.
We do have other troops and there are other places in Iraq, so action in Karbala doesn't mean we've "given up" on Falluja or Najaf.
Posted by: Jen ||
05/04/2004 20:18 Comments ||
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#5
Najaf. Fallujah. Now Karbala.
Sounds like a Classic Pincers Movement to me.
Herding the Tater Tots. While keeping the pressure up. Hope the Grunts call in the 'Big Sticks'.
Air and Arty. To 'make the rubble bounce' and send the message home!
Posted by: Jack Deth ||
05/04/2004 20:36 Comments ||
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#7
Boy, those islamojerks must be getting really confused.
I know I am.
However, whatever the Marines want to do is Ok with me.
Posted by: Michael ||
05/04/2004 21:13 Comments ||
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#8
There is a big difference between Felatio Falujah and Karbala. The Dinks in Falujah are more organized and have much more popular support. Karbala has a bunch of wild mini-dinks who have lost popular support after harrassing and demanding money. The military has much more intel and know which doors to knock on. The marines need more intel in Falujah, enter Falujah Brigade... dropping a few bucks to a few FB iraqis to gather intel, who what and where. The marines will pick off the baddies from the top down. Much better than blasting the shit out of the whole town. We accomplish our objectives without giving the arab world a civilian slaughter. Although I want to see the place leveled, we can accomplish our objectives in a much more political and sneaky way.
Physicists have discovered a new signature characteristic of radiation that could be used to detect the gamma ray emissions of smuggled illegal nuclear materials, even if they are concealed among large bundles of shipping containers.
...
"We have identified a new radiation signature, unique to fissionable material, that exploits high-energy, fission-product, beta-delayed, gamma ray emissions," said lead researcher Thomas Gosnell. "Fortunately, this signature is robust in that it is very distinct compared to normal background radiation, where there are no comparable high-energy gamma rays."
In other words, using the right type of detector, inspectors would be able to see through containerized cargo and determine if any of it contains illicit nuclear material. Hence, terrorists would not be able to bury their ill-gotten booty in a crowd. Sweet.
Contrast this to the You Cannot Make This Up: Sudan Elected to U.N. Rights Body Rantburg posting earlier today
UN officials who have visited Sudan's western Darfur region say conditions there are as bad as reports suggested. So lets all give Sudan a post on the Human Rights Comission.....
James Morris of the UN's World Food Programme said it was "one of the world's worst humanitarian crises". No, that would be the U.N Itself.
He confirmed earlier reports that more than a million people had been forced violently from their homes. He said Khartoum needed to regain control of nomadic Arab janjaweed militias, who are accused of driving out the African population. Mr Morris said food was available for only about half of the displaced people. Mr Morris added that security was the key issue and for this the Sudanese government was responsible. He said it was up to the government to bring the Arab militias - known as the janjaweed - under control. The UN has accused Sudan of backing the militias in a campaign of "ethnic cleansing" against black residents. NO! Can't be..... just ask 'Gentle'.....
EFL
The images from Abu Ghraib prison do not test oneâs convictions about the wrongness of torture. They test oneâs opinions about the wrongness of capital punishment. Just consider for a moment what this bunch of giggling sadists has done, with its happy snaps and recreational cruelties:
* It has defiled one of the memorials of regime change. I was a visitor to Abu Ghraib last summer, and the stench of misery and evil was still palpable in those pits and cellars. It is as if British or American soldiers had not only executed German prisoners of war, but had force-marched them to Dachau in order to commit the atrocity.
* It has been like a shot in the back to the many soldiers (active front-line duty, not safe-job prison guards) who were willing to take casualties rather than inflict them and who fought selectively and carefully. What are the chances of the next such soldier who is captured by some gang of Saddamists or Wahabbists or Khomeinists?
This is only the rehearsal for oneâs revulsion. One of two things must necessarily be true. Either these goons were acting on someoneâs authority, in which case there is a layer of mid- to high-level people who think that they are not bound by the laws and codes and standing orders. Or they were acting on their own authority, in which case they are the equivalent of mutineers, deserters, or traitors in the field. This is why one asks wistfully if there is no provision in the procedures of military justice for them to be taken out and shot.
#2
Hitchens is doing his moral equivalence shtick. In his mind, American humiliation of prisoners is equivalent to Muslims torturing Americans to death and then mutilating their corpses. Back when I was young and foolish, I used to read his screeds in the Nation. Then, he was blaming Henry Kissinger for the Khmer Rouge's genocidal impulses. The more things change, the more they remain the same.
#4
A third possibility is being reported by NBC now, namely that the physical abuse was done by Iraqi guards rather than US soldiers.
I can believe the psychological games were done, and perhaps ordered (don't condone it, but can believe it).
Rape & other physical abuse is another matter.
Hitchens is right about one thing: the Army will take this very very seriously. It smears the professionalism and ethics of 99%+ of our soldiers and officers. It cannot be allowed to stand without clear punishment, if verified.
#5
Zhang: I think the opposite is the problem. It always weakens the point when they bring up the actions of terrorists or tyrants in the same discussion as actions of our soldiers. It inevitably (even if indirectly) results in a comparison between the two groups. And that inevitably sounds like an excuse or justification. Luckily, POTUS and the military leadership have not made the same mistake. They are doing it right: express disgust, take action to punish those involved, and make sure it doesn't happen again. That approach provides as much moral high ground as we can salvage out of this incident. Pointing at the actions of our enemies for "perspective" just smears us with their deeds. Of course there is a horrible double standard: pointing it out is unecessary and makes for a weak and pathetic argument. This is "take responsibility" time, no nuance, no perspective.
As Hitchens says later in the article: "If anyone wanted to argue that torture is a matter of routine in many of the countries whose official media now express such shock, they would have to argue by way of double standards. This case would collapse at once and of its own weight if the standard was to become a single one, or if one torturer became an excuse for another. . . . But there's no hypocrisy in holding self-proclaimed liberators to a higher standard."
#6
"It always weakens the point when they bring up the actions of terrorists or tyrants in the same discussion as actions of our soldiers."
Oh, yes. Let's ignore the fact that Saddam and the terrorists make atrocities their policy and concentrate instead on limited problems within our own military.
It's SOOO much more productive that way, no?
And, again, I'm not trying to downplay the crimes committed BY AMERICANS in Abu Gharib; I just think it needs to be put into context. Read this; VDH sums up my take on it very well.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
05/04/2004 14:42 Comments ||
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#7
Other than his anti-Kissinger fetish, Hitchens usually has a lot of thoughtful stuff to say in the international arena, though he is a ranting Socialist.
The mugging soldiers around the pyramid of Iraqi nakeds was perhaps the most telling.
To them:
1) Don't take pictures.
2) Take your MP job serious enough not to pull fraternity pranks.
3) You are MPs, not military intel, or CIA so don't put yourself in a position to be sent to Levenworth to crack rocks for a dozen years.
4) Don't embarass this country by acting in a way that anti-death penalty columnists suggest making exceptions in your case.
#9
Hypocracy. Maybe the soldiers should have murdered the prisoners as infidels. You know those Muslim prisoners didn't believe the way we believe, so maybe they should have just killed them and drug them through the streets. Maybe the soldiers should have sent their children into the prison cells with bombs strapped to them and blown up the infidel prisoners. Maybe they should have sent their children with bombs strapped to them to blow some Iraqi infidel children in a bus.
Sometimes the hypocracy makes me want to puke. The soldiers were wrong, and they will be punished. But make no mistake, there are no Americans over here whooping and celebrating in the streets because of the despicable acts of those particular soldiers. They embarrassed us. But were the tables turned, you can be sure that believers in the religion of peace would be dancing in the streets.
Superb article you posted, RC! Now I think I understand what you were saying the other day, when the photos first hit the airwaves. An out-of-proportion double standard is taking hold, as you said .
From the article RC linked:
"So as we in America address the moral inadequacies of a handful of our soldiers, let those in the Middle East take heart from our own necessary and stern democratic inquiries and audits, and thus at last now apply the same standards of accountability to tens of thousands, far more culpable, of their own."
(They should, but like they ever will . . . ha!)
From the excerpt posted by sludj:
* It has been like a shot in the back to the many soldiers (active front-line duty, not safe-job prison guards) who were willing to take casualties rather than inflict them and who fought selectively and carefully.
Yeah, that's one of the things I hate most about what happened--plus it will get the cry-baby Islamofascists in a "take revenge" whirlwind.
Also:
What are the chances of the next such soldier who is captured by some gang of Saddamists or Wahabbists or Khomeinists?
Well, it probably would go worse for them now--but their chances weren't very good anyway, before.
Another thought (dare I say): maybe the jihadis will now realize that we can be mean and ugly too . . . just a thought (although I don't condone what happened--it wasn't okay and it provided way too much fodder for the "Culture of Blame " in the Arab world and among the West's non-thinking libs)
#11
cingold: Another thought (dare I say): maybe the jihadis will now realize that we can be mean and ugly too . . . just a thought (although I don't condone what happened--it wasn't okay and it provided way too much fodder for the "Culture of Blame " in the Arab world and among the West's non-thinking libs)
During the Civil War, the Confederate Army shot black prisoners from the Union Army, thinking that the Union Army wouldn't mind. In response, the Union Army started shooting Confederate prisoners. The result - Confederates stopped the systematic execution of black Union prisoners. Reciprocity is what it takes for the other side to stop ill-treating our people. All this stuff about "higher standards" is both wrong and more importantly, gets our people tortured and killed.
What's that, some sort of low rent form of religious government?
Posted by: Tibor ||
05/04/2004 15:55 Comments ||
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#15
the statement about the civil war is INCORRECT. The CSA did NOT shoot black prisoners. They sold them back into slavery. They threatened to shoot white officers found leading black troops on grounds of inciting slave rebellion (since most black soldiers were runaway slaves whose free status CSA did not recognize) The Union threatened to retaliate in exact number. The CSA then agreed NOT to shoot white officers. They continued to sell black POWS into slavery. This led to the breakdown of prisoner exchanges, but there was no other Union retaliation.
Do you suppose for one minute that if we tortured prisoners as "retaliation" this would lead the terrorists to STOP torturing our folks?? On the contrary, that would only lead them to INCREASE it, since their goal is to make us look bad throughout the muslim world. They would not give a flying f*** what this meant to their own guys who were captured, unlike the CSA. This is a different enemy, in different conditions. In the conditions of today the what happened at Abu Ghraib was a disaster for us strategically, and that is what has Hitch so angry.
#16
Correction - i DO seem to recall at least one instance (the crater?) where the CSA DID shoot black POWS, but that was the exception, and is unconnected with the Union threat to shoot CSA officers.
There was an interesting case later in the war when Union forces were chasing a guerilla around the Virginia countryside (forget his name). They executed a few of the guerillas they captured, so the guerilla leader executed a couple of Union soldiers *he* captured, and threatened to do tit for tat unless the Union side desisted. They did.
Posted by: Carl in N.H ||
05/04/2004 16:19 Comments ||
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#19
And re the jihadis thinking we can be mean and ulgy too: they *already* think the worst of us, due to the media hysteria about Gitmo.
Abu Ghraib just turned the knobs to 11, that's all.
Posted by: Carl in N.H ||
05/04/2004 16:21 Comments ||
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#20
Yep, that's the man LH, thanks ! John Singleton Mosby.
Posted by: Carl in N.H ||
05/04/2004 16:31 Comments ||
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#21
Reciprocity is also the reason Hitler never used chemical weapons. The allies could blanket his cities in the stuff, but he was only able to launch (relatively) minor air attacks on Britain. (The Germans killed 50,000 British city-dwellers, the Allies killed 2,000,000 German city-dwellers, the bulk of them through aerial bombardment).
#22
An out-of-proportion double standard is taking hold, as you said .
Damn straight. I heard a talking head babbling about "war crimes" and "international law" last night -- they only do that when Americans are the accused.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
05/04/2004 16:42 Comments ||
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#23
But, Carl in N.H: wasn't the stuff at Gitmo pure fabrication, and they know it? Now they have to consider that we can be as mean as they are, with the photo "proof," and that we have the bigger guns to back us up. So maybe they better play nice. In other words, I don't think it would stop them from torturing our prisoners, but it might cause them to think twice about our capabilities. ("But Ahmed, if I join the jihad and the Americans capture me, they might treat me 'like a woman.' " )
Just looking for a little silver lining after Abu Ghraib . . . in any case, I still firmly believe that we gotta "walk the talk" concernig the treatment of POWs, even if they don't.
#25
There are two double standards, and neither one is legitimate. First, the arab media (and their fellow travelers at BBC, CBS, etc.) are having a field day about the humiliation of prisoners held by US forces, while whistling blindly by the graveyard of arab atrocities. This is wrong--but to be expected from unprincipled sources like these. Second, there are those who take the opposite tact, and try to blunt the criticism of the US guards by pointing to the arab atrocities. They call this "perspective," "context," etc. This is also wrong, and also unprincipled. That is because the only thing that matters is how the US guards should have acted. The only context is US morals (not terrorist morals). The only perspective is the professionalism that we expect from the US military (which it delivers almost 100% of the time). The third approach, the right one, the one being taken by POTUS, Rummy, Kimmett, Powell, and every other US authority I have heard from is (1) express disgust, (2) punish the guilty, (3) take steps to prevent it from happening again, and (4) avoid, at all costs, besmirching our military by comparing the actions of terrorists and tyrants to the actions or our servicemen and women in an attempt to excuse the guards' behavior--or even leave the impression that you are trying to excuse their acts or blunt the criticism. I am so pissed at these guards. I don't care much about what they did to the prisoners. But I am furious about what they did to the US. If they had sat around and planned for months how they could do the most harm to the US they couldn't have come up with any better plan than what they did.
#26
sludj: If they had sat around and planned for months how they could do the most harm to the US they couldn't have come up with any better plan than what they did.
Now you're getting carried away. If you could point out the practical aspects of this damage, it might help me understand your perspective a little better. You're going on and on about damage, but I really don't see it. Al Jazeera is going on and on about the US deliberately going out and shooting civilians - women and children on a daily basis. Muslims I know here in America believe it. They also believe the stuff about Guantanamo. There is nothing anyone can do that will change Muslim minds about the campaign in Iraq.
And it's not just Muslims who have parochial views about subjects near and dear to their hearts. Almost to a man, Chinese I have spoken to here in America believe that both the Chinese embassy bombing and the EP-3 incident were the fault of the US military. All characterized the American response (regrets, statements of condolence, very sorry, et al) as inadequate. All characterize the US as an arrogant bully. Some of these folks are even US citizens.
As far as I'm concerned, if these boys were interrogating people for information rather than torturing them for kicks, I can't really get too worked up about what they did. All this talk about "standards"* is complete BS. The folks who have the guts to fight us are fighting us. The rest are just wannabes who want to wring concessions out of us by pretending to be jihadis. If these guys are so brave, why has Saddam been in power for so many decades?
* If our boys have to die for a word, that word should be poontang (borrowing from Full Metal Jacket).
#27
You don't have the Big Picture of this "scandal" or know the way Iraqis are truly perceiving it until you read Omar's take on it over at Iraq the Model.
Posted by: Jen ||
05/04/2004 18:15 Comments ||
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#28
What's with all this POW crap? Why do you have more than 10? You don't want me to come back again. I thought we'd been over this. POWs are a luxury item and we are living in hard times.
#29
Jen and ZF. Jen, thanks for the link, very interesting. If this guy is legitimate and has a good sense of the whole country, that is encouraging. But I would note that even he says, "I also noticed that the abuse pictures brought a flashback from the days of Saddam and the way Iraqi prisoners were treated in; a tone of fear was in the voice of my friend 'this could happen to me or anyone else. If someone gets randomly arrested (for being near the site of some clashes or violent demonstrations in the wrong time), he might be tortured or humiliated by the prison guards before they recognize that heâs got nothing to do with the insurgency or the terrorists' That I must say will have a very bad effect on encouraging Iraqis to participate in the political process in Iraq." ZF, maybe I am overreacting but I am pissed. "Muslims I know here in America believe it. They also believe the stuff about Guantanamo. There is nothing anyone can do that will change Muslim minds about the campaign in Iraq." The big difference is that the accusations are true in this case. Read what Bush, Kimmett, Rummy, Meyers, Powell, etc., etc. are saying. This incident hurts us in a way that all of the lies don't hurt us. It is different. If you don't think so, we disagree.
Not sure about the Gitmo stuff being "pure fabrication" on the part of the media, but the media was reporting the hooding and shackling of the prisoners, plus showing them to the media, as "human rights violations" and even "atrocities", which is what I meant by hysteria.
And in the minds of the jihadi set, the "atrocities" at Gitmo became easily conflated with actual atrocities, to the extent that I recall a couple of stories from a year or so ago which depicted captured jihadis as being actually terrified of going to Gitmo.
As for whether they "know" the stories are not real, of course I do not know either way, except that I am constantly amazed at how primitive and vicious these people are, and fully expect them to swallow uncritically any horrific lie they hear.
Posted by: Carl in N.H ||
05/04/2004 18:44 Comments ||
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#31
sludj, you missed the best part! Here's more from Omar:
"...After a few words of greetings that friends usually exchange after not seeing each other for a long time, the conversation turned towards the current situation in Iraq, and as the prisoners abuse issue is the hottest topic nowadays, I started my attempts to discover their points of view about it. They were all upset but they showed satisfaction with the fast and firm reaction of the coalition higher officials and were also impressed by the honesty of the American soldier who reported the abuse and uncovered tha awful behavior of those criminals but at the same time they said that theyâre looking forward to âsee the offenders get some real punishment, not just directing few harsh words. A sentence for 3 or 4 years in prison will be convenientâ. Others showed more understanding to the American law system.
This is very good news! "more understanding of the American law system!"
These people really haven't had any law system for years and years.
And Rule of Law is one of the key things we bring with us to liberate and democratize this country!
(This also ties in with how we're dealing with al-Sadr in Najaf and the American corpse abusers in Falluja and then there will be Saddam's trial, too.)
I think that we're making great strides with the Iraqi people in a little over a year!
Posted by: Jen ||
05/04/2004 18:44 Comments ||
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#32
Jen: You are absolutely right. We are spoon fed bad news every day. The rest of Iraq outside of Najaf and Fallujah are progressing. It has been only one year. There is still a LOT of crap on the carpet. But, that said, we are cleaning it up, slowly but surely.
Posted by: remote man ||
05/04/2004 18:53 Comments ||
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#33
Second, there are those who take the opposite tact, and try to blunt the criticism of the US guards by pointing to the arab atrocities. They call this "perspective," "context," etc. This is also wrong, and also unprincipled.
Gee, thanks, sludj. Now I'm "unprincipled". You sure do love to fly off the handle a lot.
Sludj, I'm sick of your attitude. Did you read the VDH piece? Have you ever bothered to think about what I've said?
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
05/04/2004 20:37 Comments ||
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#34
RC. I posted the VDH article yesterday, and responded to it then (I repeated part of the response again above). It was late in the day and you probably missed it. I'm not going to get into it with you again: we disagree and we aren't going to be able to persuade one another. You think there is value in pointing to terrorist atrocities as part of the response to the Abu Ghraib debacle. I think that is simply an excuse, and I think it lowers us to make such comparisons. I have thought hard about what you have said, I think you are taking an approach that demeans our servicemen and servicewomen, but I understand that you don't think it does. I'm not sick of your attitude--you are a hell of a bulldog in your defense--but I think you are misguided and mistaken on this issue. Also, I think you need to stop posting pictures of butter faces at your website--c'mon, there are more attractive women than that. RC, we have different styles. You have called me stupid, told me you are sick of my attitude, etc., etc. That's not my style. I think you are wrong, but I'm not going to insult you (if I have in the past it was heat of battle and I apologize). I think we have a lot more in common in our views on the WoT than differences. But it just depresses me when people refer to the actions of our military in the same breath with actions of monsters in an attempt to defend our military by the comparison. Like I have said, watch Bush, watch Rummy, watch Kimmett, etc., etc. They've got it right in refusing to do that.
#35
"It is as if British or American soldiers had not only executed German prisoners of war, but had force-marched them to Dachau in order to commit the atrocity."
This guy is known jornalist and dont know that US , Britain and others allies murdered German soldier for exemple?!
That kind of thing always happen in a war, the judgement must be made by the number of cases vs number of soldiers in operational theatre and if it's a POLICY of governement and how the case is dealt with.
There are assholes in all places
and War is the most stressing situation.
#36
My husband was travelling with several of his 1st yr cadets (West Point seniors, about to graduate / be commissioned). A news story on this came up and he asked them what they thought caused it.
Unanimous answer: "Failure of Leadership. The NCOs should have prevented this from happening and stopped it when it did. The commissioned officers should have made sure the NCOs did so."
And don't get me started on the sargeant who says he wasn't trained or given guidance.
Every officer I know - and I work with a BUNCH of them every day - is furious and disgusted about this. It goes against their professionalism and ethics.
Having said that, there is a lot of disingenous rhetoric going on about al Ghraib. There's a big difference between psychological abuse and rape. The posed nude photos are abusive and shouldn't have happened, but they are not torture. (Except to the pride of Muslim Arab men, who object most of all to "being treated like women". )
Emotions DO run high during wartime. Given NBC's report today of possible Iraqi guard involvement in the actual physical abuse, it's likely that what occurred has several dimensions to it that need peeling apart in order to assign blame & punishment appropriately. From what I can tell, the chain of command is doing just that.
#37
You think there is value in pointing to terrorist atrocities as part of the response to the Abu Ghraib debacle. I think that is simply an excuse
Because you simply refuse to hear my point.
It's NOT an excuse. It's an explanation that, while we're taking the matter seriously, we'd really, really, really appreciate if people got a sense of proportion. It's a call for maturity in the world.
Also, I think you need to stop posting pictures of butter faces at your website--c'mon, there are more attractive women than that.
? WTF ?
I think you are wrong, but I'm not going to insult you (if I have in the past it was heat of battle and I apologize).
Then why the hell did you use the term "unprincipled" above?
But it just depresses me when people refer to the actions of our military in the same breath with actions of monsters in an attempt to defend our military by the comparison.
That's senseless. Utterly senseless.
"In a single incident during WWII, US soldiers murdered at least one POW and injured dozens; the soldiers involved were tried and those who were convicted were punished. In comparison, the Japanese military used POWs and other prisoners in experiments on biological, chemical, and conventional warfare; few of those involved, if any, were ever punished."
This kind of statement depresses you?
Why?
It's a bald-faced statement of the facts. It places the US and our military in a hell of a positive light in comparison to the Japanese Imperial Army. If anything, it emphasizes our strengths -- self criticism and a willingness to accept hard truths about our selves -- that our enemies lack.
Get a grip.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
05/04/2004 23:01 Comments ||
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#38
Sludge, you might want to go take a look at instapundit's site. He's got an interesting take on it:
Instead of viewing this purely as a disaster (though, of course, it's that) we should view this as a teachable moment. Everybody in the Arab world knows that their govenments engage in torture on a far greater scale, and as a matter of policy. People's careers are built on it, not destroyed by it. We should be taking advantage of this opportunity to demonstrate the difference.
Wouldn't we have to mention the actions of others in order to "demonstrate the difference"?
Nah. Of course not. That makes you sad.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
05/04/2004 23:08 Comments ||
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#39
Robert Crawford: Wouldn't we have to mention the actions of others in order to "demonstrate the difference"?
Nah. Of course not. That makes you sad.
Most countries take our differing standards to mean that they should abide by their standards, and we should abide by ours. This is why, in their eyes, the mutilation of American dead is acceptable.
#41
This is why America will lose to the muslims. While Americans are agonizing about what is moral or amoral, muslims are dragging bodies through their streets and planning the next attack. Yes, what the soldiers did was wrong from our standards, but it is nothing compare to what muslims do their own kind and others. So get over it or when the muslims are finished with you, there will no be any moral standards to defend or argue about.
When will Americans realize that no matter what they do, muslims will always hate them. It will take generations to de-program these people. By then, they would have succeded in destroying the country. Indoctrination in this part of the world is done from the top down, therefore Americans, not matter what good examples they set, will never gain the hearts and minds of these people. Their governments will never allow it. Example: hubby's place of work is a very large government company that has in place, a very powerful censorship in the computer network. One cannot access any website that can remotely be connected to hate crimes, porno (that includes dating services)or gambling. Well, guess what has been circulating around for days now? You got it...all the photos of the prisoners being "tortured" in Iraq. We all know that somebody lifted the censorship or turned a blind eye to allow them to circulate. For what purpose? Simple: to promote more hate!
Cyberspace is the only sure place to find the man the United States says is Al Qaedaâs top Africa bomber, a master of concealment still at large despite a five-year-old manhunt. The baby-faced features of Fazul Abdullah Mohammed peer mockingly from the FBI Most Wanted website, which offers $25 million for help in hunting the Afghanistan-trained militant. The elusive Comoran-born Fazul, aged about 30, also masterminded an attack on an Israeli-owned hotel in Kenya in November 2002 that killed 15 people, US officials say. Failure to apprehend the slender militant has strained nerves along Africaâs eastern seaboard, where terror-related US travel warnings have hit once lucrative tourism income.
The trail grows warmest in Somalia, the chaotic country where Fazul, an accomplished linguist and computer expert with at least 18 aliases, is believed to have been hiding for most of the past 12 months. In many ways the ruined country is a logical choice: After 13 years of militia anarchy it has no government or police and is too dangerous for Western investigators to visit often. But it has drawbacks for the Comoran too: It is a gossipy society where a strangerâs presence is quickly noted. In the most violent region, the south, it is not hard to find people who say they have seen Fazul. While the FBI reward might inspire unwelcome creativity in informantsâ reports, sightings of Fazul or his associates have sometimes proven very reliable.
In March 2003 a suspected associate of Fazul, Suleiman Abdalla Salim Hemed, a Yemeni, was captured in Mogadishu with the help of warlord Mohammed Dheere and is now in US custody. Hopes rose of a usable lead to Fazul, but he slipped away. In late 2003, some militia bosses and ordinary residents reported Fazul audaciously moving around Mogadishu with a team of bodyguards recruited from a variety of Somali clans. âWe get a look at him two or three times a week,â one of Mogadishuâs top warlords told Reuters in January 2004. âHe is guarded by a dozen or so bodyguards.â
This year, militia sources say, Fazul has sought sanctuary among the mixed-race, minority communities that live in villages dotted along the coast between Mogadishu and the Kenya border. His Comoran looks blend in well with the coastâs Benadir and Bajuni people of mixed Somali, Arab, Persian, Portuguese and Malay ancestry. Some of these settlements - ancient communities a world apart from Somaliaâs major inland nomadic clans - speak a dialect of Swahili, one of Fazulâs five languages. Reliable or not, that account fits with Fazulâs known method of âhiding in plain sightâ: Adopting the guise of an itinerant Islamic preacher, he settled in a very similar isolated Kenyan coastal village, Siyu, in 2002, evading detection for months. âWe hear this man is wanted. Well, I can tell you he stayed here without a problem,â Aliyow Haji, an elder in Gendershe village south of Mogadishu, told Reuters in early April.
Local residents said that every morning during a recent visit Fazul exercised on a beach near Gendershe before an outbreak of factional fighting prompted his team to leave for the Hamar Jajab district of south Mogadishu. In a report by a militia on his movements from February to mid-April, Fazul visited southern Kismayo port, the villages of Kudha, Madhomo, Darusalam and the inland town of Dinsor, where he apparently traded precious stones. âSome of those coastal communities are extremely remote, to the extent that he could hide but he couldnât do much. For Fazul it would be the equivalent of putting yourself under house arrest,â said US Somali watcher Ken Menkhaus.
Somaliaâs political and militia leaders, themselves collectively responsible for 13 years of bloodshed among their own people, are hardly the most credible of informants. But the sightings by ordinary people beg the question: If Fazul is so visible, why does no one apprehend him? The answer comes in two parts, Somalia watchers say. US policy is that arrests of guerrilla suspects in east Africa should be made by the âhost nationâ in order to build a cooperative relationship with Washington and, in Somaliaâs case, perhaps also to avoid mishaps in a violent country where US military intervention has a sorry record of failure. That puts the responsibility squarely on Somaliaâs de facto government - the warlords. But they are reluctant to act. The militia bosses recall that Dheere became unpopular among many factions in Mogadishu because of Hemedâs arrest, which was seen as an anti-Islamic favour to imperialist Washington. Secondly, capturing Fazul could mean killing his bodyguards, which will involve clan blood feuds, and perhaps also complicate ties with hardline Islamist elements. Just to catch a suspected militant - a matter of no importance to ordinary Somalis simply struggling to survive - the risks just are not worth it. âWe will let him be... It will cause us a headache if we intervene,â the Mogadishu warlord said.
Brigadier General Mastin Robeson, commander of a US task force based in Djibouti, told Reuters he did not know where Fazul was, adding that it was difficult to work discreetly on the ground with friendly forces. âThere are a number of people who have been allegedly sighted but when we investigate those with host nations, frequently those are not true,â he said. âAt this point we do not have him pinpointed,â he said of Fazul. âItâs difficult to get anybody who can âblend inâ to the countryside, particularly if what youâre trying to do is get host nations to take the lead.â
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
05/04/2004 1:41:46 PM ||
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#1
So, is there a way we might see his sorry ass, after having been kidnapped out of there to the Centcom prison in Qatar, having the lice pulled out of his scraggly beard at 4:00 AM on Fox News?
WASHINGTON (AFP) - Faced with a mounting insurgency, the United States has decided to keep force levels in Iraq (news - web sites) at beefed up levels of about 135,000 for the forseeable future, senior defense officials said.
The Pentagon (news - web sites) moved last month to build up the force to deal with uprisings in the south and in Fallujah by extending the tours of 20,000 troops from the 1st Armored Division and the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment for at least three months.
Officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told AFP those troops will be replaced with fresh units at the end of their extended tours, but the overall force will be maintained at its current strength, which has hovered around 135,000 troops.
General John Abizaid, head of US Central Command, which includes Iraq, "has expressed his desire to keep things at current levels for a while," a senior defense official said. "I donât think there is going to be a time limit associated with it," the official said.
The plan is expected to be announced on Tuesday, but the brigades chosen for the next rotation in Iraq will probably not be identified all at once, the official said. "There is a decision in the works. The details are being finalized and itâs going to be talked about tomorrow," said a second official.
The decision effectively shelves an earlier plan to shrink the size of the US force in Iraq to between 105,000 and 115,000 troops. There is now recognition that hostilities in Iraq are unlikely to subside after the handover of limited power on June 30.
Critics of US policy insist more troops are needed to pacify Iraq, and point to Washingtonâs failure to commit the necessary forces as a major cause of the deteriorating security. More than 750 US troops have now been killed in Iraq since the US-led invasion in March last year. April was the deadliest month for US forces since the start of the campaign.
Abizaid told reporters last week he did not favor big increases in US troops except to deal with the immediate security problems. "Am I comfortable with where we are now? Militarily, yes," Abizaid said. "If the situation were to move into less secure circumstances than are currently visible in the country, I would go to the secretary and ask for more forces, and General Sanchez agrees with me on that. But I donât see a need to do that now," he said, referring to General Ricardo Sanchez, his commander in Iraq.
US commanders had hoped to shift responsibility for security to Iraqi police and civil defense forces, easing the pressure on stretched US forces. But many Iraqi units collapsed when riots and fighting erupted last month, as Sunnis and Shiites rallied against US forces in opposition to the year-old occupation.
Abizaid acknowledged that Iraqi security forces will have to be re-trained and re-equipped, and may not be ready to go before February of next year. US troops also have had to fill a hole left by the withdrawal of Spanish and Latin American troops from the area around Najaf, where followers of radical Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr have been attacking coalition forces.
Abizaid expressed hope that international troops, particularly from Muslim countries like Pakistan, Morocco and Tunisia, could be recruited to serve in Iraq after June 30. But other senior US officials have said neither NATO (news - web sites) allies nor other countries are likely to provide more troops so long as fighting continues in Iraq. Finally, a shot across the bow for the insurgents.
#4
Yes, this is the victory that no one is talking about -- a huge base in Iraq. Look at the map! With a presence in Afghanistan, and in Iraq, we have every important Arab player surrounded. This, I believe, is the real reason for the Iraq war. And it is smart, and nervy, and figures us for the big player in the M.E. for many years to come.
Posted by: Luigi ||
05/04/2004 18:29 Comments ||
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#5
This is news?
We're going to have a 'presence' well into 2006, and beyond. When President Bush wins Re-Election.
LOTS of places to stage F-15s, 16s, A-10s and BUFs out of in all that desert! With MUCH shorter travel times to Gaza, Tripoli, Syria and the Bekkaa Valley.
Who knows?... We may just dig up a couple of Chemicals Bunkers and some more buried Iraqi Fighters in the process!
Posted by: Jack Deth ||
05/04/2004 19:08 Comments ||
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#6
Basically the lack of international participation and slowness in standing up Iraqi forces has compelled us to set up a base in a region of extreme strategic importance.
However, for this to be true benefit and not a curse, we need offsetting increases in troop strength from redeployments and enlarging the military. We cannot place the burden on such a small group. Getting off the Korean peninsula is a good start.
The leader of a rebel group has been detained in a search operation in Sernovodsk, Chechnya, a law enforcement source told Interfax on Tuesday.
"Two other rebels accompanying the leader of the rebel group offered armed resistance to law enforcers and were killed. One of them had been involved in the murder of deputy chief of the Ackhoi-Martan interior department," the source said.
A PK pistol, a grenade-launcher, a flame-thrower and rounds for an under-barrel grenade-launcher were discovered at the scene.
An investigation is being carried out at the scene.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
05/04/2004 1:34:45 PM ||
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An operation against the gang of Akhmed Avdorkhanov goes on in the Kurchaloi, Nozhai-Yurt and Gudermes districts of Chechnya. âThe guard service of the Chechen president, a police regiment, an OMON special task force and a traffic police regiment of the Chechen Interior Ministry are taking part in the operation,â a ministry source told Itar-Tass. Chechen Deputy Interior Minister Saltan Satuyev heads the operation. Six rebels, including three natives of Dagestan, were killed in the operation on Monday. There is information that the rebels have suffered losses and Avdorkhanov may be wounded. The police are searching for rebels and hidden weapons. Six suspected rebels were brought to the Gudermes police department at noon for identification. âSome more people have been detained,â the source said.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
05/04/2004 1:32:08 PM ||
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Original e-mail from Iraq posted at Winds of Change -- some EFL-ing.
. . . I met yesterday outside Najaf with a 1LT from the Iron Dukes of 2-37 Armor who as tank company XO was leading a convoy of two platoons of tanks on HETs* from Al Kut in the east to Najaf in the west, a distance of about 175KM. As they passed through the town of Diwaniyah, they were ambushed by a group of insurgents--undoubtedly former regime soldiers with some military training--with RPGs, heavy machine guns, and AK-47s. The Task Force Scouts had passed through only 30 minutes earlier without contact, so this was a well planned ambush of probably 50 or so organized in two and three man teams.
The convoy suffered three soldiers KIA in the initial moments of the ambush--one Iron Duke, one 2ACR cavalry trooper, and one transportation officer. The convoy immediately returned fire. They had several HUMMWVs in escort, and the tanks on the back of the HETs were manned with loaders and TCs on crew served weapons.
Within minutes of the ambush, one of the HETs was disabled, and the Lieutenant realized he would have to stand and fight to ensure he had everyone. The Iron Dukes "broke chains" as they described it, by essentially driving off the back of the HETs under fire to engage the enemy. In the course of the next hour, they fought their way out of Diwaniyah employing every weapon available to them including main gun. They got everyone and everything out with the exception of one HET.
Enemy BDA was 30 killed and an unknown number wounded.
In other words, 50 or so bad guys ambushed a unit in road march formation, with the tanks chained down on flatbed trucks--and the ambushers suffered 60% KIA.
Damn! Our guys are good.
Endnotes
*HET = Heavy Equipment Transport, a flatbed truck used to transport tanks when not in combat; this is easier on the roads as well as on the tanks themselves.
Posted by: Mike ||
05/04/2004 12:14:36 PM ||
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#1
Just to make the picture clear, since I didn't spell it out over at Winds of Change:
Transportation convoy, lightly armed, carrying tanks on huge flatbed trucks. Huge chains holding the tanks on the trucks. Skeleton crew inside tanks. Convoy commanded by a transportation Captain; 1st Lt. tanker in charge of the tanks / skeleton crews.
They hit a big ambush and a transport truck is disabled. This young 1Lt, probably 24 yrs old or so, sizes up the situation, has his NCOs start firing back from the tanks that are still on the trucks. And WHILE they are firing, he has them break out of the chains by using the shear strength of the tanks, backing off the transports (nobody back there making sure they weren't going off the edge, either), organizes the defense and gets them all out of there, including the lightly armed transportation people, alive.
And saves all the equipment except for the one disabled HET.
Just an incredible display of leadership, quick thinking and courage. No wonder the 2 star met him in the field and wrote to the 4 star about him.
I'm incredibly proud of our young men and women out there.
Posted by: Evert V. in NL ||
05/04/2004 14:07 Comments ||
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#4
And WHILE they are firing, he has them break out of the chains by using the shear strength of the tanks, backing off the transports (nobody back there making sure they weren't going off the edge, either), organizes the defense and gets them all out of there, including the lightly armed transportation people, alive.
You know, if this was in a movie, nobody would believe it - but it shows the kind of thinking that our guys are best at.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
05/04/2004 14:14 Comments ||
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#5
BigEd, no mention of Al-Jiz in the general's letter and I kind of doubt they were invited. This had the hallmarks of an attack planned & executed by ex-Special Repub. Guards or possibly special Fedayeen forces. One colleague here is a tanker who served in GWI and Bosnia ... he says the giveaway is the combination of weapons used in the ambush & the fact that they were split into small coordinated teams.
#8
Sure. But if the attackers were pros and planned to take out a fair number of tanks in a serious ambush, they might not want the civvies running around getting in the way. The letter suggests to me that the tactics of the ambush were well thought out and not just a couple guys "heroically" "resisting" from rooftops at a distance. TV coverage is great when you think you can get a real photo-op, but as the resulting firefight shows, even 50 attackers well-coordinated can't count on winning.
#10
Can somebody explain the following to this clueless civilian:
"A day after this fight, I received an email from CPT Thomas Moore, of the 1175th Transportation, who was the convoy commander. He wrote: "were it not for the courage and actions under fire of the 2ACR and 2-37 soldiers that day, he is certain all his men would have been killed." He asked me if he and his soldiers engaged in that fight with us could wear the 1AD combat patch. I told him I'd be honored."
Which outfit was part of 1AD and which was not, and what is the import of the Transport guys wearing the 1AD combat patch ?
Posted by: Carl in N.H ||
05/04/2004 16:50 Comments ||
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#11
Carl,
It can be really confusing & I confess I still stumble over some of the Army organizational details. Start by distinguishing the combat branches (specialties) from supporting branches.
Combat branches like infantry, armor etc. are expected to initiate and bear the brunt of battle. The other branches are there to support that by providing services, supplies etc.
The tankers are part of the 1st Armored Division. Armor is one of the combat branches. The 2/37 are part of 1AD (2nd Battalion, 37th Armor).
Apparently there was at least one member of the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment present - they're not part of 1AD but are in a combat branch.
The transportation people are not in a combat branch. Although they get basic training, their main focus isn't on battle techniques.
What happened here is that when the convoy was attacked, the bulk of the response came (as you would expect) from the combat troops present, i.e. the Armor guys. Soldiers in combat branches who see battle are entitled to wear combat patches.
Normally, transportation people don't get combat patches. In this case, however, the transport guys fought along with the Armor guys, insofar as they could from the cabs of the HETs and their Humvees. I would expect they were armed with rifles but nothing heavier. According to this letter, the transportation Captain who was in charge of the convoy recognized and praised the battle leadership of the young Armor Lt. However, he asked the Armor commanding general if he would authorize the transport soldiers to wear the 1AD combat patch as well, in recognition of their participation in the fight. The commanding MG was happy to do so. So these transport guys (and women, potentially) have the honor of wearing a combat patch from a major combat arms Division - something that transport soldiers ordinarily would never get.
Implicit in the letter seems to be the fact that the Captain realized the fight needed to be directed by the Lt., whom he outranked, but who was doing a great job. Both officers did the right and effective thing in a difficult situation.
Posted by: Man Bites Dog TROLL ||
05/04/2004 18:24 Comments ||
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#13
Outstanding performance from the Captain and Lieutenants on down! Officers should Lead From The Front. And they did. Magnificently!
Especially the NCOs and Truckers.
React! Respond. Adapt!
In other words, the old Army maxim lives on: 'If something works. Don't screw with it!'
Posted by: Jack Deth ||
05/04/2004 19:26 Comments ||
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#14
It's got to make you warm inside knowing that if Hollywood makes a movie of your military activity, Vin Diesel or the Rock will play your role. I think I know who they would have cast in a role about my military service: :-)
Posted by: Super Hose ||
05/04/2004 22:54 Comments ||
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#15
[Troll droppings deleted]
Posted by: Man Bites Dog TROLL ||
05/04/2004 18:24 Comments ||
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#16
Many Junior officer's wonder and worry whether they have the guts to perform under pressure and not let their down. This 1st Lt need wonder know longer.
Ten security officers have been killed in attacks in Afghanistan's southeast, officials said, a day after a top US general warned of an upsurge in Taliban violence in the region. Five Afghan soldiers were killed in an ambush in Zabul province on Monday, provincial governor Khial Mohammed Husini told AFP. The soldiers were ambushed as they were travelling between provincial capital Qalat and their headquarters in the troubled Shahjoy district to the north, he said. "Government troops were despatched to the area but did not find the attackers," he said.
In a separate attack, five security officers were killed by suspected Taliban just after midnight Monday in southern Kandahar province, a former stronghold of the ousted Islamic fundamentalist militia, provincial military spokesman General Abdul Wasay said. "Five people were killed by the Taliban last night at 12 in Mianishin district in northeastern Kandahar near the border with Zabul," he said. "Taliban attacked the district headquarters, they took these people with them and have killed them in the mountains." Three of those killed were soldiers, one was a hired security guard and the other was a military official from the area, he said. Kandahar's military commander General Khan Mohammed confirmed the second attack and said it was the work of Taliban. However, he said all five killed were government troops.
In a third incident Monday, suspected Taliban militants attacked a government headquarters in Zabul's Mizan district, about 30 kilometers (19 miles) northwest of Qalat, leading to the arrest of four insurgents, Wasay said.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
05/04/2004 1:20:04 PM ||
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Iâve posted a letter describing a recent ambush attack over on Winds of Change.
At a time when professional soldiers are angry and disgusted at the abuse of prisoners, which tars them all with the brush of unprofessional behavior, itâs worth reading about this young armor Lieutenantâs quick thinking and effective leadership when a convoy was ambushed.
#1
OOps, Mike and I crossed paths posting this here.
Do go read the whole thing if you haven't already, including my comment filling out the story if it isn't clear from the terse mil-speak. DAMN but I'm proud of our young men & women ....
EFL
Some of the worst abuse in the Al Ghraib prison scandal was reportedly perpetrated by Iraqi guards recruited by the U.S. military and brought into to the jail to help maintain control of the growing population of Iraqi detainees. "The Iraqi guards apparently engaged in rape of female prisoners and perhaps some young boys," reported NBC Pentagon correspondent Jim Miklaszewski on Tuesday.
#1
That is more like it! Now, we are talking about torturing the old fashioned way - the muslim way!
Brace yourselves for the torrent of denial coming from the Muslim World: A muslim will never do that. It is forbidden by Islam to torture people, unless, of course, they are infidels.
#2
How many of these "detainees" are guilty of having been active participants in attacks on coalition forces? Not to sound too bloodthirsty, but this is what happens when terrorists/insurgents are captured.
#4
Did you ever think if one of them were innocent? Sure, a vast majority of them want to attack our forces in the country. But you guys (especially you Bomb-a-rama) make it seem like its okay that we do this. You said it yourself: #2 How many of these "detainees" are guilty of having been active participants in attacks on coalition forces? Not to sound too bloodthirsty, but this is what happens when terrorists/insurgents are captured.
Posted by: Bomb-a-rama 2004-05-04 4:16:10 PM
So should the personel involved be arrested and put on trials for war crimes for doing what they did? I mean, gee, isn't that one of the charges that is going to go up against Saddam in the coming months, torturing people in his jails?
But once again, what if just one of those people in the prison that was tortured was innocent? What then? Did you ever think of that?
FROM DRUDGE Iraqi cameraman recounts ordeal in US detention
The US interrogater yanked the 24-year-old Iraqi maleâs hair and peeled back his eyelids... Even with the other problems with prisoners in Iraq, being that this guy is an Al-Jazeera employee, one has to take anything he says with a grain of salt. He seems as though heâs taking notes from the pictures released of the soldiers apparently abusing prisoners.
"Before the war, I had a bright idea about the Americans. I thought they were people who believe deeply in democracy and respect freedom," he said. "Now I believe that the Americans are far removed from anything related to democracy and freedom." This remark, at the end of the article reminds one of a Kerry supporter calling up a talk radio show, and saying they JUST MADE UP THEIR MIND, but by the way they present themselves, like reading talking points, everyone knows they are lifelong commited Democrats who have never voted for a Republican.
#6
IMO, the history of past posting shows that Man Bites Dog is a fake -- he pretends to be a gung ho, pro-military, âknock down the bad guysâ kind of guy -- and then (usually) proceeds to dump all over the Bush administration, essentially calling them all criminals without any proof to back up the slander. Man Bites Dog, just because you sound pro-military doesnât mean youâre not just a DU operative (or equivalent) out to slam Bush. Itâs not like you ever offer alternative, realistic solutions, do you?
#7
"Before the war, I had a bright idea about the Americans. I thought they were people who believe deeply in democracy and respect freedom," he said. "Now I believe ..."
Now, after careful consideration, he sides with the chaps talk their friends into blowing themselves up to kill innocents, who strap bombs to their children and send them out to blow up cafes or busses, who use women and children for shields when they fight, and who . . .
Posted by: Sam ||
05/04/2004 17:56 Comments ||
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#8
Solution: total commitment! Nuke the bastards!
Posted by: Man Bites Dog TROLL ||
05/04/2004 13:28 Comments ||
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The torture and humiliation of Iraqi prisoners, captured on camera in a US run Baghdad prison, was controlled and devised by US agencies including the CIA, a lawyer claimed today. Guy Womack, who represents a military policeman under investigation, said the photographs of the Iraq prisoners that have inspired widespread revulsion âwere obviously stagedâ in order to manipulate the prisoners into co-operating with intelligence officials. âThey were part of the psychological manipulation of the prisoners being interrogated,â said Womack, lawyer for Charles Graner, a corrections officer who was activated to the military in March 2003 and served at Abu Ghraib. âIt was being controlled and devised by the military intelligence community and other governmental agencies, including the CIA,â Womack said. The soldiers, he said, were simply âfollowing ordersâ. President George Bush has urged his Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to quickly get to the bottom of the Abu Ghraib scandal and to ensure that US soldiers found guilty of misbehaviour are appropriately punished. The president said he had been âshakenâ by the reports of prisoner abuse âbecause I know that this doesnât reflect the values of our countryâ. I picked this article because it illustrates that the so called âabuseâ and âtortureâ were deliberate interrogation techniques. The media has gone into feeding frenzy over what are at worse minor abuses. Ladies and gentlemen I fear Iraq has been lost right here. Nobody seems prepared to stand up and say some people may have overstepped the mark, but where are the bodies, the raped girls, the men with ears and tongues cut out?
The whole thing was summed up for me when one the men who were photographed hooded with wires attached, after ranting for a minute, concluded with "They treated us like women.". And that my friend says it all.
Posted by: Phil B ||
05/04/2004 12:01:19 PM ||
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#1
They treated us like women
Check out the psycho-analytical roots of terror article elsewhere on this site. It could be worse: they could have been treated like young boys.
Posted by: Man Bites Dog TROLL ||
05/04/2004 12:08 Comments ||
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#3
OK, Mike so what is the problem, because I don't see one.
Posted by: Phil B ||
05/04/2004 12:18 Comments ||
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#4
I am struggling ,too, to put this into perspective.
No excuses offered, but what I have seen so far reminds me of "Hell Week" in any number of fraternities through at least 1985... and nothing close to people shredding.
Although we must react to the soldier's actions now that they've been dispalyed, I am wondering what effect this photos will really have?
What we've seen is far less severe than Saddahm did. Yet, those Iraqis, who are the insurgents, who seem to respond more to force than to gentleness, might actually be less inclined to challenge because of fear of being naked in front of a woman MP?
I am not condoning the actions of the MPs, I am just asking the question.
Remember on the micro/local level, we are building schools, feeding people, etc etc, and those people are likely more to respond to the personal interaction rather thatn what they see on TV. The ones whipped into a frenzy to fight, like the Sunni Triangle Ba'athists, or the Sadr militia, might get a "message" from the bad photos, feeling all our talk about punishment of the MPs is for show, and not reality.
They may be less inclined to fight if they think they will be naked in front of that female MP, to them, a fate worse than death.
#7
I call bullshit on the "it was the CIA" crap -- can you think of a better way to play on Vietnam-era conspiracy theories embedded in the skulls of a jury of those who couldn't think up an excuse peers by decades of Hollywood tripe?
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
05/04/2004 12:31 Comments ||
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#8
Here you have a trained, professional corrections officer caught abusing prisoners and trying to weasel out of it. When the story first broke, he claimed that he wasn't "properly trained." That didn't sell. Now, he's claiming that the CIA made him do it. This will play well among the moonbat left, and, it is probably hoped, it will make the guy enough of a cause celebre that he'll get off light (or get a pardon from the Kerry administration.)
Note to Atty. Womack: the "I was only following orders" defense got tried at Nuremberg. It didn't work.
Posted by: Mike ||
05/04/2004 12:33 Comments ||
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#9
Since Frank Church is dead, who will they get to gut the CIA this time? It's a quagmire... of loonies lining up for the job - assuming heavy TV converage.
#10
The problem is that these interrogation techniques conflict with other goals.
* encouraging surrenders instead of resistance
* development of good will throughout the population
* recruitment of collaborators
* maximizing the reliability of information
* encouraging compliance with international law
* encouraging proper treatment of US troops who are captured
* enforcing military discipline and order
* improving the reputation of the United States
The military personnel -- all up and down the chain of command -- who were actively or passively involved in this scandal believed mistakenly that the importance of collecting tactical intelligence from captives always trumps all other considerations. There was a catastrophic failure to exercise good judgement, to weigh potential costs and benefits.
It seems that these rough techniques had become routine instead of serving as a last resort in extraordinary situations. As the techniques became routine, the perpetrators became inured, thoughtless, reckless, and then amazingly foolish.
The Intelligence Community call already give a goodbye kiss to its recent expectation that the Supreme Court would allow extensive prerogatives in isolating terrorists from legal oversight. The Intelligence Community has only itself to blame.
.
Posted by: Mike Sylwester ||
05/04/2004 13:43 Comments ||
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#11
Mike, why do you think these were really "interrogation techniques"? This story is about the line a defense lawyer's peddling; it's 99% guaranteed to be bunk.
Your willingness to believe it doesn't speak well of your judgement.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
05/04/2004 13:45 Comments ||
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#12
Well, this is what defense attorneys are for - when the accused crime is so heinous that they literally have no friends. I was just thinking about this - that the guards have no-one behind them except their lawyers. Certainly not me. I was willing to see them hanged in front of Abu Ghraib and at the gates of Baghdad. I recognize I'm somewhat biased on the subject.
Do I believe the lawyer? No. But he has an obligation to offer reasonable defenses to test the case brought against his clients.
But there were rapes and unexplained deaths involved. We're not talking about "interrogation techniques" and "frat boy hazing". Somebody needs to do time, and possibly a whole bunch of somebodies, almost certainly starting with this lawyer's clients, as soon as he fails to spread the guilt around enough to win an acquittal. "Following orders" isn't a valid excuse for sadistic glee caught on camera. Caught, I might add, for the future amusement of the sadists.
I have to say, this is the wrong tack for a defense. The only thing that'll get them off is proof that the photos are faked. So long as those naked men are actually prisoners, the accused are fucked.
Posted by: Mitch H. ||
05/04/2004 14:22 Comments ||
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#13
why do you think these were really "interrogation techniques"?
Posted by: Mike Sylwester ||
05/04/2004 14:38 Comments ||
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#14
Hey gents, why don't we let the military courts figure this one out. AFAIK, none of us were there so trying the case without real knowledge other then media droppings from the new yorker or wherever is not going to do it (& I happen to like Hersch). Saying this or that guy needs to hang is also a little pre-mature, especially guys who had clean records up to this point. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt having been in their boots until a full investigation and court proceeding is finished. Plus, if there was a death of an epw due to guard malice said name servicemen would've of been going through court martial proceedings way before now.
I agree though, pictures was a stupid thing to do and I fear for the guys who came forward on this and leaked to the media. The unit should've handled all this in house, now we've got a fiasco. Just like the West case but on a definitely more stark level. If the worse that comes out of this is some Iraqis getting cold water thrown on them and walking around doing naked pyramids - then who gives a f*ck, most of us on active duty don't give a sh*t about that. If intel was breaking these b*tches down to get info and it got carried too far then they have to pay the piper and take the lesson learned. I'd like to get old spooks' take on this from the intel angle.
#16
"A fifty-three-page report, obtained by The New Yorker, written by Major General Antonio M. Taguba and not meant for public release, was completed in late February. Its conclusions about the institutional failures of the Army prison system were devastating. Specifically, Taguba found that between October and December of 2003 there were numerous instances of âsadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abusesâ at Abu Ghraib. This systematic and illegal abuse of detainees, Taguba reported, was perpetrated by soldiers of the 372nd Military Police Company, and also by members of the American intelligence community. (The 372nd was attached to the 320th M.P. Battalion, which reported to Karpinskiâs brigade headquarters.)
(From the Rantburg-link-to-Rantburg article (#13).)
Hard to tell who told who to do what, and who was doing stuff on their own--but sounds like things were going astray from the start at Abu Ghraib, including the jailing of innocent Iraqis.
What strikes me is that the perps don't have the same level of training and discipline our other soldiers do (and, what makes someone want to become a prison guard here in the States anyway? Hmm.) and that the General in charge didn't have any experience with prison management. That was a dumb appointment. What were they thinking?
Guess we'll have to wait and see how this plays out.
#17
My first impression is that a commander lost control of the unit. In a war zone, that can be fatal to all, especially to command.
Of course defeatists and leftists will use this and milk it for all it's worth, for its public relations value, which isn't much, especially when you consider the rather huge and loud yawn the press gave to Iraqi mass graves.
Someone Saturday night asked me about this and I told them, ( they were liberals/leftists) the CIA wouldn't have ordered anything like this. If the spooks really thought these folks had information worth telling, those people would somehow disappear into the night, either to be turned or drain of information, in either case never to be heard from again. As it is, I fail to see how civilians or even enlisted Iraqi troops would have caught the interest of our spooks.
Maybe I was wrong to say that, but I am pretty certain the CIA wouldn't order those college level hi-jinks. I like to think our spooks ( God Bless 'em anyways ) are professional enough that iffin' they are involved in black ops, it would be in such a way they are clear of blame.
But, as I said, this doesn't appear to be anything more than a commander who lost control of the troops. A good enough reason to cashier any officer.
#18
...Actually, every last one of those idiots is screwed as soon as the Army locates the class roster for their Law Of Armed Combat briefing that everybody gets every year, and covers all of that nice stuff. They can blame it on the CIA all they want, and it won't work.
Suspected Al Qaeda and Taliban militants hiding out in this countryâs semiautonomous tribal belt have ignored an April 30 deadline for foreigners to register with the government and lay down their arms. Pakistani authorities this weekend quietly extended the amnesty offer, expressing hope that an extra seven days would convince the militants to live in harmony with the federal government here, and to cease attacking US troops over the Afghan border. "This has been a farce from the start," says Ahmed Rashid, author of The Taliban. "I think it wonât be long before we see some action from the Americans on this."
In March, Pakistanâs military got badly bruised when a mission to capture or kill an estimated 400 extremists in South Waziristan left more than 100 soldiers and civilians dead, and failed to capture any Al Qaeda. Pakistani authorities then convinced tribal chieftans in South Waziristan to form a lashkar, or tribal army, to hunt down the militants themselves. The irregular force staged a war dance before heading to hills with red ribbons tied to their rifles so they would know not to shoot each other. However, they failed to round up foreign militants.
But they did have a good time, and they looked very ferocious...
Finally, last week, a top commander of the Northwest Frontier Province, Lt. Gen. Safdar Hussain, traveled to South Waziristan to meet local militants who support the foreign fighters, telling a cheering crowd wearing long robes and enormous turbans that, "the impression this is the den of terrorists has been proven wrong." It was an ironic statement, given that video footage of the meeting shows one of the militants, Naik Mohammad, arriving to greet military officers with his Uzbek bodyguard in tow. Local sources in South Waziristan say the Islamic Movement for Uzbekistan, an extremist group closely allied to Al Qaeda and to Mr. Mohammed, organized his security for the event.
Posted by: Paul Moloney ||
05/04/2004 3:51:20 AM ||
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Excerpted from the Christian Science Monitor
Finally, last week, a top commander of the Northwest Frontier Province, Lt. Gen. Safdar Hussain, traveled to South Waziristan to meet local militants who support the foreign fighters, telling a cheering crowd wearing long robes and enormous turbans that, "the impression this is the den of terrorists has been proven wrong." It was an ironic statement, given that video footage of the meeting shows one of the militants, Naik Mohammad, arriving to greet military officers with his Uzbek bodyguard in tow. Local sources in South Waziristan say the Islamic Movement for Uzbekistan, an extremist group closely allied to Al Qaeda and to Mr. Mohammed, organized his security for the event.
Posted by: Paul Moloney ||
05/04/2004 4:42:32 AM ||
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A confidential input from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) on the growing presence of the Peopleâs War in India and the ultra-left wing outfitâs efforts to forge a grand alliance of Maoist and communist groups across the world reportedly played a decisive role in the US placing the PW in the terror list. The CIA input, police sources monitoring naxalite activities said, has also spoken about the possible merger of the Maoist Coordination Centre (MCC) with the PW, thus making the latter a formidable extremist outfit in the country. The MCC has also been placed in the watch list of terror organisations. The sources said Indian intelligence agencies were exchanging information on the extremist front with their American counterparts, and during one such meeting last month, the former passed on information about the third conference of the Coordination Committee of Maoist Parties and Organisations of South Asia (CCOMPOSA) held at the behest of the PW.
The political resolution of the CCOMPOSA meeting, held on March 19, made a sharp attack on US-led imperialists and asked people to resist the American aggression. The sources pointed out that the two Indian intelligence arms â Intelligence Bureau (IB) and Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) â too provided the needed input to the CIA on the PW agenda in bringing all left-wing revolutionary outfits in the world under the aegis of the Revolution International Movement (RIM). The CCOMPOSA meet also dwelled on uniting all Maoist groups in South Asia. Maoist groups in India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan and a splinter group from Sri Lanka are members of the committee.
Though the police authorities in the state might not get any immediate benefits from the US move, in the long run, the new order will curtail the PW from seeking âexternalâ support. "Now onwards, the PW will be under the watchful eyes of the CIA," the sources said.
Posted by: Paul Moloney ||
05/04/2004 3:26:14 AM ||
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Pakistan Army bosses have once again taken cover behind the flimsy excuse of âprotecting the national interestâ and have refused to submit to the Parliament the inquiry reports of the 1988 Ojhri Camp bomb blasts, in which many retired generals were involved. Almost 1,500 people had died in the blasts which showered rockets and missiles all over Islamabad-Rawalpindi area and within a month led to sacking of the civilian government of Prime Minister Mohammed Khan Junejo who had ordered an inquiry into the incident. The demand to make these inquiries public was made by Opposition Senators but the Defence Ministry has now taken the position that the contents of these inquires cannot be made public and have been withheld in the national interest. It is obvious that if released, the Pakistan Army will be deeply embarrassed and General Musharraf cannot afford to annoy his constituency. This was the case when the ISI was apparently selling missiles on the blackmarket that were meant for the Afghanistan. Luckily, most of them should be inoperable now.
Shortly before the blasts at Ojhri Camp, located in the heart of Rawalpindi, it had been announced that an American team would visit Pakistan to audit the stocks and accounts of the weapons provided to the Pakistan Army through the ISI. The blasts destroyed all records and most of the weapons thus making it impossible for anyone to check the stocks. Two inquiries teams, one led by a Military General and other by the Defence Minister of the Junejo government, Rana Naeem, had completed the task soon after the incident but both were dumped and never made public. According to sources, the Committee headed by a General had come to the conclusion that General Ziaâs right hand man, General Akhtar Abdul Rehman, along with other senior military officials was involved. Its report, presented within one week of the incident, called for sacking General Rehman but the military ruler General Zia rejected it. Another committee was set up by Prime Minister Muhammad Khan Junejo. This was a political committee headed by a Cabinet minister and comprised four federal ministers. However, controversy surrounded the findings of this committee. The members could not reach a consensus on who was responsible for the Ojhri tragedy. In his remarks, the head of the committee, former NWFP Governor Aslam Khattak concluded, "No one was responsible. It was an act of Allah."
A book by Texas Congressman Charlie Wilson, published a few months back, revealed the CIA had stockpiled weapons in Pakistan to deal with the remnants of Soviet-backed elements in Afghanistan after the Soviet pullout. These weapons were stored at the Ojhri Camp which blew up and with it went $100 million worth war equipment, made up of 30,000 rockets, millions of rounds of ammunition, vast number of mines, Stingers, SA-7s, Blowpipes, Milan anti-tank missiles, multiple-barrel rocket launchers and mortars. The book said General Zia called his Ambassador in Washington, Jamshed A Marker, and asked him to tell the CIA and Charlie Wilson to replace the weapons. Within 24 hours, huge US cargo planes were unloading Stingers and other weapons into Pakistan direct from the frontline stores of NATO.
Posted by: Paul Moloney ||
05/04/2004 3:20:06 AM ||
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KARACHI, Pakistan (AP) - A car bomb shattered a bus carrying Chinese engineers to a port project in remote southwestern Pakistan on Monday, killing three in what the government called a terrorist attack. The attack occurred as the bus was taking at least 12 Chinese to the port, said Sattar Lasi, the chief of police in Gawadar. The site is about 300 miles west of Karachi, near the border with Iran.
"This is clearly terrorism. The aim was to terrorize the Chinese working at the Gawadar port," said Lal Jan, another senior police official.
Brilliant, Inspector, brilliant!
Islamic militant groups have targeted foreigners in the past, but never in such a remote part of the country.
Target of opportunity?
Shoaib Suddle, the police chief in Baluchishtan province, said it appeared the bomb was triggered by remote control. Police investigators found fuses and pieces of a cylinder that contained the bomb in the white Suzuki car, said Communications Minister Babar Khan Ghauri. Only the skeleton of the car remained, and the bus also was heavily damaged, with windows shattered and metal twisted, he said.
Ghafoor Baluch, a fisherman who lives near the scene of the attack, said the explosion shook the walls of his home. "We saw pieces of metal from the car strewn on the beach and stuck in nearby trees," he said. The explosion left a four-foot crater and smashed the front of the bus, he said.
Hours after the blast, Mohammed Sattar, a police official in Gawadar said they detained two residents for questioning, and that the car, which was used for the attack, had been stolen from Karachi. Sattar gave no other details, and it was unclear what prompted the police to arrest the men.
Turban, beard, AK, shifty eyes, possessing fuses, C-4, cell phone and primer cord: that's half the male population. Wonder how they figured it out?
Lasi said 11 others were injured - nine of them Chinese. The others were a Pakistani driver and security guard.
Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali condemned the attack and ordered authorities to tighten security.
"Legume! Round up the usual suspects!"
In Beijing, the Chinese government demanded Pakistan investigate the attack and directed its diplomatic missions in Pakistan to help the victims. "The Chinese government attaches a high degree of importance to this incident," the Chinese Foreign Ministry said in a statement. China is an important ally of Pakistan and one of its chief trading partners.
Let this happen again Perv, and just see how many more Chinese nuclear components you get.
The Chinese all worked for China Harbor Engineering Co., which has been working on the Gawadar project since 2002. The company asked Pakistani authorities to increase security, but said it had no plans to suspend work.
Posted by: Steve White ||
05/04/2004 1:50:30 AM ||
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Rats, Fred did this yesterday. Too many posts to keep track of 'round here mutter mutter natter natter
Posted by: Steve White ||
05/04/2004 1:57 Comments ||
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An Israeli attack helicopter fired a missile early Tuesday at a group of armed Palestinians in the Khan Younis refugee camp, killing two and wounding 22, residents and doctors said. Witnesses said the gunmen fired two missiles at Israeli tanks in the camp before the helicopter struck.
"Mahmoud! Fire at the tanks!"
"Achmed, isn't that kind of dangerous!"
"C'mon, ya wuss! Allah is with us! What could possibly happen?"
The attack came during an Israeli military operation in two parts of the camp. Tanks and bulldozers tore down four buildings across from a Jewish settlement, witnesses said. Israeli forces withdrew from the area early Tuesday, the army said. The Israeli operation came a day after Palestinian gunmen opened fire on an Israeli vehicle on a nearby road, killing a pregnant settler and her four young daughters. Doctors at Khan Younis hospital said five of the wounded were in critical condition. Some civilians were among the wounded, they said.
Wonder if our UAE buddy 'Gentle' can find the cause-and-effect relationship here.
Posted by: Steve White ||
05/04/2004 1:37:50 AM ||
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Another difference between the Israelis and the Paleos.
An Israeli army officer was sentenced to six months in prison Monday for shooting dead a 16-year-old Palestinian bystander, the army said. It was the first time a soldier has received a jail term for killing a Palestinian since the outbreak of violence in September 2000. The captain, who wasn't further identified, was convicted of manslaughter for the October 2002 killing of Mohammed Zeid. Enforcing a curfew in the West Bank village of Nazlat Zeid, the officer fired shots at a house, killing Zeid, who was inside. "The court ruled that the behavior of the officer was extremely reckless and unreasonable, and there was no danger to the soldier's life when the shots were fired," an army statement said. Since the outbreak of fighting, more than 1,000 Palestinian bystanders have been killed, said Noam Hoffstater from the B'tselem human rights group, but only 13 soldiers have been indicted for the killings.
That's because most of the bystanders weren't.
Two other officers were convicted of killing Palestinians but received suspended sentences.
Posted by: Steve White ||
05/04/2004 1:32:31 AM ||
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we will now list all the Palistians convicted of terrorists attacks on Israelis:
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
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Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
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