The Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice arrested an 80-year-old man who was with a 17-year-old girl, Madinah reported. The girl was a friend of the old manâs granddaughter. The girlsâs father forced the old man to marry the girl in front of the commission officials. After the marriage certificate had been signed, the girl had a nervous breakdown.
Posted by: Mike Sylwester ||
05/09/2004 19:47 Comments ||
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#2
Stone 'er.
Posted by: Mr. Davis ||
05/09/2004 19:49 Comments ||
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#3
There are a number of possible ways to interpret this article. None of them are particularly savory. Probably the best would be an Arab Strom Thurmond.
#5
badanov - She dodn't think ahead. She could have held her tongue, then when he got "nikid", she could of pointed, laughed. . . He then gets so angry, he drops dead of a heart attack. Her story is that he died in the act, trying hard to be, and couldn't get things up and running so to speak, died trying.
Crown Prince Abdullah warned Saudis on Saturday against showing sympathy to terrorists, saying even silence can count as support, Saudi Arabia's official news agency reported. "I warn and caution ... everyone not to be silent, as silence means he is one of them," SPA quoted Abdullah as saying at a reception in his palace in the Red Sea port of Jiddah. "Those people have killed innocents — children, women and men."
"So make sure you don't invite them to tea..."
Last month, attackers bombed the General Security building in Riyadh, killing five people and injuring 148 more. Last week, militants attacked the offices of Houston-based ABB Lummus Global Inc. in the western city of Yanbu, killing five Westerners and a Saudi. "Anybody who is silent over what happened in Riyadh and Yanbu is considered one of them," Abdullah said. Prince Abdullah vowed to curb the wave of terrorism. "God willing, we are following them, and with God's help we will get them, no matter how long it takes, even if that means 20 or 30 years," he said.
That's about what I expect, given Prince Nayef's talents...
Posted by: Fred ||
05/09/2004 4:12:13 PM ||
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#1
Let's see - shun a bunch of fanatic loners who hate your guts anyway. Yeah, that'll stop 'em.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
05/09/2004 16:18 Comments ||
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In case of contact with eye rolling spittle spewing gun-totin' jihads, avoid eye contact and look away!
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
05/09/2004 17:39 Comments ||
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.... and with God's help we will get them, no matter how long it takes,.... I just checked if Alhamedi had an up date on the handful of bad guys surrounded in the mountains by Saudi security forces. No up date but maybe within the next 20 or 30 years they may catch 'em. I found this link that shows that the brother princes are not singing in the same choir. According to Prince Naif the best way to shun terrorists is by communicating with them.
#4
You're a day late and a petrodollar short, Prince Abdullah. Go sell it to your pet Wahhabist clerical fanatics and see how long you still continue to breathe.
The story requires registration, but the Telegraph is worth it.
The outcry over the allied torture photos in Iraq, the U-turn over the European referendum, and a Tory surge in the polls have provoked renewed speculation that political and personal pressure could prompt him (Blair) to stand down this summer.
Robin Cook and Glenys Kinnock acknowledged that Mr Blair may have to go, as a poll showed Labour would lose power if he stayed in office - but would survive with a majority of 77 if Gordon Brown, the Chancellor, replaced him.
The wife of the former Labour leader, who himself recently raised the prospect of Mr Blair "hanging up his boots", drew attention to the pressures the Blair family has faced in nearly a decade at the top of the party and seven as Prime Minister.
"Sometimes he looks really drained and exhausted and I think particularly about the pressures on a family," she told GMTV.
A YouGov poll in the Mail on Sunday suggested that if Mr Blair remained as Labour leader he would get 36 per cent of the vote at the next election, compared with 40 per cent for the Tories, leaving him without an overall majority in the Commons.
#1
RWV, there's been speculation about Blair's future for longer than I can remember! Blair may step down before the next election, or he may not. Just a few days ago he was talking about seeing through another complete term, presuming he'd win the next election. It's Cook's ambition to get rid of Blair (I can't speak for Kinnock, but it would seem to be the case for her, too) so I'd expect him to say or do anything that encouraged ideas that that may happen sooner rather than later. I wouldn't say this is one of the Telegraph's more informative pieces :)
#2
Judging by the state of the Tory party at the mo' I think Blair will get in - maybe not comfortably, but he'll get in. His undoing will be the Euro-constitution referendum early in the next parliament. I think this is where we'll see Gordon 'texture like sun' Brown steal the hot seat and rightly so...
Posted by: Howard UK ||
05/10/2004 6:47 Comments ||
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It's a brave sould who tries to predict the likely outcome of the next GenElect. Far too early and too close to call at the mo, IMO. The Tories may appear to be in a 'state', but the state they're in is far stronger than it's been for years.
The constitution issue's going to be an interesting factor; the immigration issue's going to be interesting; whether the Tories try to reclaim ground taken by the UKIP by becoming more eurosceptic's going to be interesting...
Who first on the high profile left summons the 'courage' to state (what many are most probably thinking) Howard's a Joo and his best buddy (Letwin)'s too! will be very interesting. I think when that happens, the electoral s&^% will truly hit the wind turbine. Crunch time. Time to place bets yet?
My odds:
Tam Dalyell 3/1
Galloway 4/1
Clare Short 20/1
Robin Cook 30/1
Posted by: Howard UK ||
05/10/2004 7:30 Comments ||
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Galloway's a likely suspect, but i) if he said it, would it get widely reported? I wouldn't be surprised if he's already muttered such things at the rallys, conventions, fatwa parties etc. he phlegms over every day or so, and ii), I reckon he hates Blair more than he hates Howard, at the moment at least...
Abusive Father of the House Dalyell's already spouted his anti-Semitic crap, got away with it and no doubt is itching to have another go. He also dislikes Blair but has more loyalty to his party. That's why he's my favourite.
You can imagine the sort of private conversations that go on:
- One thing we could work on is Howard's Jewishness - that'll lose him some votes, won't it?
- Yes, I'm sure it will. But pulling that card might backfire on us in a big way.
- What if we just, you know, make the issue public tangentially, raising the issue but not risking being anti-Semitic ourselves?
- For exapmle, by suggesting that Howard's likely to be pro-Israel...
- ...and let other, non-Party, commentators add "'coz e's Jewish"?
- Precisely!
- Alternatively, we could just let Mad Fool Dalyell have another rant about Jewish cabals in the Commons as a parting shot before stepping down.
A British Muslim, trained in a "terrorist training school" in Pakistan as a hijacker in preparation for the September 11 attacks, backed out at the last minute after gambling away thousands of pounds given to him by Al-Qaeda, a report said in London. The potential hijacker, a former waiter in a Manchester curry house was enlisted at a mosque in Oldham and "attended terrorist training school in Pakistan. But he had second thoughts about his suicide mission as he flew to America and surrendered to the police after gambling away thousands of pounds given to him by Al-Qaeda," The Sunday Times, claimed.
Damn. I just blew coffee out my nose...
Born in Britain, he grew up in his family's home village in Pakistan before returning to Oldham when he was 16. After sixth-form college, he worked at a restaurant but became addicted to gambling, running up debts of 15,000 pounds. He was approached at his local mosque by a recruiter who offered him money in return for carrying out "a job". He accepted, even when he realized what was involved. "If your life has no colour and... you can be a hero by dying, why not?" he said, according to the report.
Because you're a deader when the job's done?
"I think there are a lot of frustrated Muslim youths in Britain who feel the same way." He traveled to Lahore, where he was taught how to carry out a hijacking and familiarized with the inside of a Boeing cockpit. "I knew they wanted me to do some kind of operation in which I would die but my life was such a mess that in my mind I was already dead," he said.
I hope he's providing lots of details on where in Lahore, who, where, what...
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
05/09/2004 2:02:08 AM ||
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The ultimate punishment for this Brit Muslim would be execution by repeatedly dropping a 10,000 gram bar of gold on him as many times as it takes.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
05/09/2004 14:22 Comments ||
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Now tell me...why haven't I seen this story in the major media? The networks and publications in this country have become the fifth column. They are anti-American, anti-Bush and completely dhimmi-ed out.
Posted by: jawa ||
05/09/2004 23:58 Comments ||
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Italian anti-terrorist police arrested five suspected Islamic extremists Sunday, including an imam, saying they were preparing to leave Italy to carry out suicide bombing missions against Western targets in Iraq. Police said the Algerian-born imam and four Tunisian nationals were arrested in Florence and nearby Siena during an anti-terrorist operation carried out across Tuscany and Liguria in the early hours of Sunday. They said the men belonged to the outlawed Ansar al-Islam group and provided logistical support to Osama Bin Ladenâs Al Qaeda network. âWe have dismantled a cell of Ansar al-Islam,â said Genoa police chief Oscar Fioriolli, whose officers carried out the operation. The leader of the group was named as Mahamri Rashid, a 34-year-old imam of one of Florenceâs two mosques. Prosecutors said the four Tunisians, all aged in their 20s, had been planning to leave for Iraq via Syria and Yemen in the next few days. There they were to make contact with other Ansar al-Islam extremists who were to supply them with weapons and explosives and help them enter Iraq to carry out suicide bombings, according to prosecutors.
Sundayâs arrests were the latest in a series of detentions of mostly north African immigrants made by Italian police since the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States. Prosecutors believe Italy has long been used as a logistical base for Al Qaeda in Europe. Some of those arrested have been convicted of terrorist offences. However, a Muslim leader Sunday pointed out that many of those arrested amid huge publicity are later quietly released for lack of evidence. âWeâre tired of these stories. Weâre exasperated by this climate of alarm over a threat which doesnât exist, or at least, not in these terms,â said Homza Roberto Piccardo, national secretary of the Union of Islamic Communities in Italy. He cited the case of 28 Pakistani immigrants arrested in Naples two years ago on suspicion of plotting to kill a NATO admiral but later released.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/09/2004 8:19:16 PM ||
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Police investigating the Madrid terror bombings have arrested a Moroccan whose telephone number was found in the ruins of an apartment where seven suspects blew themselves up, the Interior Ministry said Saturday.
"Hello?"
"Is this Mahmoud?"
"Yes. Who's this?"
"It's the cops! Stick 'em up! You're surrounded!"
The man, whose name was not released, was arrested Thursday night in Parla, a town just south of Madrid, a ministry official said. The suspect's telephone number was found in the wreckage of an apartment where seven suspects, including the suspected ringleader of the train attacks, blew themselves up on April 3 as police prepared to go in and arrest them, the official said. Eighteen people have been charged so far — six with mass murder and the rest with collaborating with or belonging to a terrorist organization. Six of the 18 have been released from jail but still face charges.
On Thursday, the FBI arrested an American lawyer, Brandon Mayfield, 37, in the United States as a material witness in the case. Spanish officials say at least one of Mayfield's fingerprints were found on a plastic bag containing detonators of the kind used in the attacks. The bag was found in a van left near the station from which three of the four trains bombed on March 11 departed. U.S. officials said a single print of Mayfield's was found on the bag. The newspaper El Pais reported Saturday that Spanish investigators have serious doubts as to whether the print is Mayfield's. They have no record of him traveling to Spain recently, and experts found only eight points of similarity between the print and the one of Mayfield held in U.S. files because of his status as a former member of the Army. The FBI said it found 15 such points, El Pais said.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/09/2004 4:08:30 PM ||
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(Vichy Never Died)
France, struggling with a resurgence of anti-Semitic crime, said on Saturday it had thwarted an attack on a synagogue in a Paris suburb overnight after discovering a homemade bomb in its grounds. The French Interior Ministry said the amateur bomb, found in the garden of a synagogue in the Paris suburb of Villiers-le-Bel overnight on Friday, came a day after an attack on a monument to Jewish soldiers who died at Verdun in World War I. The incidents followed the desecration of 127 tombs in the Jewish cemetery of Herrlisheim in Alsace earlier this month.
Interior Minister Dominique de Villepin vehemently condemned what he called "these intolerable acts" in a statement and reiterated orders to police to make surveillance at places of worship a priority. A police source told Reuters the bomb weighed only about 800 g (28 oz) and said it was not clear whether it was an explosive or an incendiary device. Later, a Ministry source said the device -- daubed with a swastika and an anti-Jewish slogan -- was found in a bush, suggesting it may have been thrown from the street.
Meanwhile, 300 to 400 people took part in a silent march at Herrlisheim, close to the Alsatian city of Colmar, to protest against intolerance and support the Jewish community. "You have to take part, itâs that simple," a marcher told France 2 television. The increased anti-Semitic violence in France is believed to be caused mostly by Muslim youths angry about the situation in the Middle East. France is home to Europeâs largest Muslim minority of five million people and its largest Jewish community, which numbers about 600,000.
Posted by: Mark Espinola ||
05/09/2004 12:51:58 AM ||
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Sounds like a practice round. My number 2 step is enjoying France (has he should) but has recently written an almost adult paper on the origins of French anti-semitism. He's young yet, he thinks it started with Dreyfuss. LOL!
An alleged al Qaeda member accused of helping plot the September 11 attacks on U.S. cities left his fingerprints in a house used by the Madrid train bombers, according to a news report. Moroccan Amer Azizi's prints were found at a house near Madrid where the bombs used in the March 11 attacks that killed 191 people are believed to have been put together. If confirmed, Azizi's involvement would point to links between the two most devastating attacks carried out by Islamic militants in the West. Azizi's were among fingerprints of up to 26 people found at the house in the village of Morata de Tajuna, EFE said. The report said Azizi may have been one of seven militants killed when they blew themselves up at a Madrid flat on April 3 rather than surrender to police.
But I tend to doubt he was...
An Interior Ministry spokesman said he had no information about the report. The judge said Azizi, alias Othman al Andalusi, was part of an Islamic extremist underground that recruited holy warriors and sent them to Afghanistan for training in bin Laden's camps before the U.S. invasion.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
05/09/2004 2:00:29 AM ||
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is this the same guy who met with Atta in Praque?
I normally donât post blog links, but I have to ask Fredâs indulgence with this one. The Indymedia morlocks have been busted in an open, unambiguous act of treason and terrorism. Earlier tonight, Indymedia posted an article openly calling for lethal violence against military personnel and facilities in the United States. Theyâve hidden the page and threatened negative commenters with some kind of amorphous "court case" but not before the redoubtable Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs busted their traitor asses. Some of the Lizard minions (Charlesâs co-conspirators and fans) have screen shots and there is a google cache of the page.
BTW, the Mumia-cong moderator at Indymedia initially claimed that reporting the post to the FBI would be useless, since they donât log ip addresses. Then a different morlock proceeded to post the ip addresses of those who made negative comments! At least I think it was a differnt one, you never know about these schizoid meth-monsters.
Posted by: Atomic Conspiracy ||
05/09/2004 2:10:12 AM ||
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Posted by: Phil Fraering ||
05/09/2004 10:31 Comments ||
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Boys will be boys?
" . . . Al-Masakin would like to take this opportunity to remind the American Muslim Mujahedin, and our allies in the revolutionary and anti- Imperialist left, that ROTC buildings, armed service recruiting centers, individual military personnel, and police officers are âmilitary targetsâ. These institutions must be violently and covertly attacked.
In fact, there are thousands of unarmed military targets walking around all over the United States. Outraged American citizens and American Muslims should have little difficulty making violent contact with recruits, cadets, marines, etc.
We strongly recommend that such contact be made with a very sharp knife, pepper spray, brass knuckles, baseball bats, firearms, explosives, or the bumper of a full sized automobile, truck or SUV." (Al-Masakin http://majdur.htmlplanet.com)
Yeah, right.
Wake up, America.
(P.S. "Make violent contact with . . . marines ?" On American soil? Baw-ha-ha-ha!! These Islamoidz really do have a death wish.)
#6
Unless they do their attacking in LLL land, they're going to be in for a fat surprise.
This ain't Spain.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
05/09/2004 12:07 Comments ||
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#7
If Bush wins his super landslide, and I don't think there is any reason he won't, this could get really bad.
I like to think all this leftist talk about attack military installations stateside is just a lot of false bravado, you know, tough guy/gal with a modem, but the better things get in Iraq, the better handle we get in the war on terrorism and the more desperate the left gets, they may well wind up concluding that violent insurrection is the only way to impose their will.
A super-landslide may well tip them over.
I say go for the super landslide. These bastards are acting this way precisely because we are in the right track. The better things get, the more insane the left will get.
#9
I don't think they'll wait for the election. The authoritarian left has been pushing a "dump Kerry" campaign for several weeks now. Enemy propaganda sites like DU are filled with attacks on Kerry, calling him "Bush-lite" for example.
The real enemy is inching toward a violent showdown, as we have discussed many times here at Rantburg.
The most likely scenario would be an attempt by hard-core Islamo-Stalinist agents to instigate an incident that they and the media collaborators could represent as a "massacre of peaceful protestors."
This would follow the "Chicago 68" script, where nobody was killed, but where calculated provocation of the police eventually brought a violent response that worked to the LLL's advantage (to say the least). This has gone down in history as probably the greatest propaganda success ever by communist agitators in the United States. It gave totalitarian elements a degree of influence over the Democratic Party that persists
to this day.
Today, the public is more jaded and the police are incomparably more sophisticated about this kind of provocation. The instigators would have to intensify the violence to lethal levels to have any chance of achieving the same effect.
Personally, I don't think they have a chance of repeating their earlier success, but scripts and memes from the 60s exert a powerful influence over the thinking of even the most sophisticated LLL manipulators. They will try in any case, it is the only option they have left.
In the wake of such an incident later this year, an extremist street demo in a heavily LLL area could easily develop into a mass uprising and massacre as enraged mobs attempt to lynch police officers, Jews, and military personnel, and destroy various facilities associated with these targeted individuals.
Most of the deaths will be LLL rioters themselves since it will take quite a bit of shooting to get their attention once they start this.
A while back, I predicted 100+ deaths from this kind of violence in a single week before the end of July. I stand by that prediction.
This is not paranoia or hysteria, facts are facts and they have been pointing toward this for a long time. If you live or work in an area where a large-scale LLL insurrection is possible, be prepared to defend yourself. This is especially true if you are in a targeted group.
#10
I concur with AC: the LLL is itching to re-create their glory days of the 1960's, and waiting until after the election to get violent would be pointless from their point of view.
Interesting (disgusting, yes, but interesting nonetheless) that we seem to be fast-forwarding through a repeat of history, in which the entire progression from 1965 through 1972 has been compressed, in reprise, into just a few short months.
What's next? A couple of Kent State reenactments before school lets out this Spring? Bombings of government facilities? "Days of Rage" riots on the capitol Mall? Desecration of soldiers' memorials? Swastikas on Jewish tombstones?
Whatever it is, it won't be pretty; and it won't wait til after the election.
Posted by: Dave D. ||
05/09/2004 14:55 Comments ||
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#11
You're right Dave, I think we are seeing the LLL run through the whole script from those days. Since a script is easier to act than to write, it is happening much more quickly this time.
Interesting you should mention Kent State. LLL agitators will know something that popular histories seldom mention: that it was perilously close to being a great deal worse. After the spate of panic-driven shooting, the enraged mob regrouped and charged en masse to within a few feet of the Guardsmen. They stood there hurling stones and insults long enough to cool off and retreat.
If they had made contact, there might well have been 40 or 100 dead rather than 4, since the Guardsmen had already killed that day and they would have been fighting for their lives the second time.
A violent mob, armed or not, is lethal if you are isolated and outnumbered, and lethal force is justified in the face of such a threat.
LLL cannon-fodder do not understand this and many of them may lose their lives finding it out.
#12
Interesting about Kent State; I didn't know that.
Seems to me the most likely focus for whatever violence is being planned will be the Republican National Convention in NYC, and I imagine it could get extremely ugly. The LLL are furious, and they're also feeling frustrated as well as betrayed by Kerry's lurch to the right (such as it is) following the conclusion of the primaries.
Anything could happen.
Posted by: Dave D. ||
05/09/2004 15:47 Comments ||
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#13
I think NYC's finest, many who lost loved ones, friends, and colleagues will have a response to the Loony Tunes. A short sharp response
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/09/2004 16:04 Comments ||
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#14
AC/Fred> did you guys or can someone send that Al masakin blog to the FBI? I can send that up my chain of command as well. Pretty disturbing but not surprising. Will not stop me though from wearing my service "c" uniform proudly while traveling through airports or back home on leave.
#15
I am sure, as things get more desperate for the LLL, that the individuals who are pushing for demonstrations and riots, like the ones Seattle had for the WTO, will try for a violent confrontation and some "KIAs" to galvanize public opinion. However, there may be a backlash against them. The biggest mistake Seattle police made is not nipping this thing in the bud. Demonstrations that get large need permits. which set definite limits on what crouds can do. Since the radicals of the LLL need an issue, they will be looking for one like this. If the slimy and opportunist politicians like Kerry and Kennedy support the radicals, they, too, will be toast.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
05/09/2004 16:17 Comments ||
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#16
To Barbara Skolaut: It wasn't Spain before 9/11 either...
#17
No, Anon4775, but that's not what Barbara's referring to.
Everything changed after 9/11 including the rules (or rather, non-rules) of engagement;
AQ now picks targets strategically, like Madrid, to get something politically, which they did.
Posted by: Jen ||
05/09/2004 18:41 Comments ||
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#18
Thanks, Jen - you got it exactly. You got my back; I've got yours.
(BTW, what is it with the "anonymous" crowd? If they don't want to identify themselves, fine - can't they just pick a name to use?)
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
05/09/2004 19:02 Comments ||
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#19
They're creatively challenged.
Posted by: Mr. Davis ||
05/09/2004 19:21 Comments ||
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#21
MBD, you've transformed yourself into a parrot?
Posted by: Mr. Davis ||
05/09/2004 19:48 Comments ||
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#22
Alaska Paul, It was not the Seattle Police who did not nip it in the bud but the LLL Major who allowed them to 'take over' a building in downtown Seattle even before the WTO meetings. Then he micromanaged the police efforts. The mayor of Seattle tied the hands of the Police and Fire departments. (Afterwards he tried to place part fo the blame on the King Country sheriff.) A lot of the 'protesters' were simply local thugs and punks trying to 'raise hell' for the hell of it.
I think the Left will try something violent and deadly before the election. Perhaps something along the lines of Madrid train bombings, or along the lines AC mentions --- attempting to create headlines which the left media will surely exaggerate 'This Police officer farted within 6 yards of this protester! How horrible! He must resign!'.
Senator Flippy has now decided this line is nonoperative. As he told the chaps at the (Wall Street) Journal, ââYou know, I called a couple of times to overzealous speechwriters and said âLook, thatâs not what Iâm saying.â
Well, itâs good to know the senator has finally found a way to neutralize the flip-flop question. Many of us assumed that, when he was for the war and then he was against it and then he was for it again, that he kept changing his mind. But now itâs possible he was just being entirely consistent -- heâs always been for it, or against it, itâs just that his ââoverzealous speechwritersââ kept putting the wrong words in his mouth.
Boy, those Benedict Arnold speechwriters who take the hard-earned money of decent, honest American politicians and salt it away in their Cayman Islands bank accounts, there oughta be a law against it. Given their uncanny ability to make Kerry say what he doesnât mean at six campaign stops a day, is it possible these overzealous speechwriters are part of the ââRepublican attack machineââ?
Who is John Kerry? They werenât his medals he threw away, just some non-name World War II vet he happened to bump into. Those arenât his four gas-guzzling SUVs in the drive, just ones owned by his ââfamily.ââ Theyâre not his words coming out of his mouth, just words wholly owned and operated by employees of a subsidiary unit of his wifeâs holding company, Benedict Arnold Heinz Kerry Campaign Rhetoric Inc., registered in Bermuda.
It takes a big man to blame everyone around him. Which is at last a rationale for the Kerry campaign: If youâre the kind of fellow who likes blaming your underlings, at least when youâre president thereâs no end of underlings to blame.
#1
Actually, it's Churchhill's Parrott. But that won't work for Skerry either.
Posted by: Mr. Davis ||
05/09/2004 22:38 Comments ||
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Mr. D - It can't be Churchills parrot, although well over 35, and would certainly do a better job running the country than Kerry, the unfortunate bird is not a natural-born citizen of the USA.
Therefore {squack} {squack} comes from the unfortunate senator.
Kerry wanna cracker {squack}?
Scumbag at center of UN Oil for Food scam is kept on the payroll indefinitely to extend diplomatic immunity
Mr Sevanâs name was among 270 individuals and companies to appear on a list of recipients who allegedly skimmed at least £5.5 billion from the oil-for-food scheme. Documents found in the Iraqi oil ministry since Saddamâs fall suggest that Mr Sevan secretly received vouchers to sell 14.3 million barrels of oil, which would have yielded an illicit profit of £2 million. When asked about Mr Sevanâs whereabouts in recent weeks, the UN would say only that he was on holiday, pending his retirement in June at the age of 66. He is due to receive a £55,000 annual pension after serving the UN for 40 years.
Now, however, those plans have changed. According to UN officials contacted by The Sunday Telegraph last week, Mr Sevan will stay in office to co-operate with the inquiry by the former US Treasury Secretary, Paul Volcker. In the deal struck with Mr Annan, Mr Sevan will continue for the next three months and be paid a token $1 (55p) a year as a consultant, while continuing to enjoy diplomatic immunity. "We could extend it again, because Mr Sevan has assured us that he will co-operate fully with the inquiry," said a spokesman for the UN secretariat. Mr Sevanâs office, however, was criticised last week for sending at least three letters to potential witnesses demanding their silence.
#1
I think we could guess at the outline of this one before. Kofi seldom disappoints...
Posted by: Fred ||
05/09/2004 20:40 Comments ||
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#2
Big mistake. The cover-up always ends up being worse than the crime.
Posted by: Mr. Davis ||
05/09/2004 21:02 Comments ||
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#3
"The cover-up always ends up being worse than the crime"
Only if someone is willing to keep investigating.
Posted by: James ||
05/09/2004 21:18 Comments ||
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#4
Um, doesn't a country have to agree to Diplo. Immunity when a person enters? If we decline to abide by it, then they can just avoid coming to the US (and therefore the UN).
Posted by: Laurence of the Rats ||
05/09/2004 21:25 Comments ||
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#5
This is the first article I have seen that touches on the real issue, which those those nice folks at the UN while espousing the virtues of international law are not in fact subject to any laws relating theft, corruption, intimidation of witnesses, etc.
Posted by: Phil B ||
05/09/2004 21:30 Comments ||
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EFL - caught via Drudge - Looks like the White House is getting their act back together. 7 out of 10 Americans donât think he should resign to elevate Dem egos
Vice President Dick Cheney rushed to the aid of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld -- under fire over Iraqi prison abuses -- by saying people should "get off his case" and let Rumsfeld do his job. "Don Rumsfeld is the best secretary of defense the United States has ever had," Cheney said in a statement from his office late on Saturday. The statement appeared to signal a White House push to rally Republicans behind the embattled Rumsfeld. "People ought to get off his case and let him do his job," said Cheney, a Republican.
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/09/2004 9:36:58 AM ||
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yup - go for it Cheney . Rummy's doing fine . Its not his resposibility to micro manage the conflict ..... As an Englishman , i am truely happy that Rummy is leading the boat .. I LOVE HIS KARATE POSE SPEECHES . A true Sensei Master :)
Certainly he is better than Aspin, Perry, or Cohen, Cinton's various SecDefs (the fact that he kept switching seems to me symptomatic of that admnistration's lack of a firm hand on the tiller when it came to things military).
I would imagine Cap Weinberger would be up there too, if not ranking higher than Rumsfeld.
Reaching way back, it seems to me that George Marshall should rate high on the list, though I am not sure exactly how he was as Secretary of Defense, although certainly he was something of a demigod as Army Chief of Staff during WWII.
I can firmly state that McNamara and Clifford should be at the bottom of the list, thanks to the mishandling of the Vietnam War.
A final note is that Cheney had the Defense position under the first Bush.
Posted by: Carl in N.H. ||
05/09/2004 14:50 Comments ||
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Indymedia killed the article. This is the google cache.
Look at the photo. Many of the people in the photo appear as they they are ignoring group sex. Lemme ask sumfin.... Thinking waaay back when you were a 20 year old, would you have ignored this event; acted as though it was not taking place, as some of the characters in this pic seem to be doing? This photo at least is a fake. If Rumsfeld has seen them and regards them as real without having them checked out, then we have a problem. This is clearly Al Qaeda propoganda. I suspect a rat in the house. Someone please prove me wrong.
Posted by: badanov ||
05/09/2004 7:55:47 AM ||
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Sorry, Fred. I was too late. Could you kill this?
#2
What's the big deal?
Where's the blood?
Bruises?
Leaking brains?
I was thoroughly briefed during Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom that Iraqi, Iranian and Syrian males were very Touchy~Feely towards their fellow man.
Posted by: Jack Deth ||
05/09/2004 12:26 Comments ||
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Hat tip Belmont Club
This is a definate for my classics folder.
If you do nothing else, go and read this at least.
We are currently in a war, but it is not a war on terrorism. In fact, that has been a great confusion, and the sooner we drop that term, the better. This would be like President Franklin Roosevelt saying in World War II, "We are engaged in a war against kamikazes and blitzkrieg." Like them, terrorism is a method, a tool, a weapon that has been used against us. And part of the reason we suffered such a horrific attack is that we were not prepared. Let's not kid ourselves. Some very smart people defeated every single defense this country had, and defeated them easily, with confidence and arrogance. There are many lessons we must learn from this.
We were not prepared intellectually. Those of us in the national security field still carried the baggage of the Cold War. We thought in concepts of coalition warfare and the Warsaw Pact. When we thought of terrorism, we thought only of state-sponsored terrorism, which is why the immediate reaction of many in our government agencies after 9/11 was: Which state did it? Saddam, it must have been Saddam. We had failed to grasp, for a variety of reasons, the new phenomenon that had emerged in the world. This was not state-sponsored terrorism. This was religious war.
This was the emergence of a transnational enemy driven by religious fervor and fanaticism. Our enemy is not terrorism. Our enemy is violent, Islamic fundamentalism. None of our government institutions was set up with receptors, or even vocabulary, to deal with this. So we left ourselves completely vulnerable to a concerted attack.
Where are we today? I'd like to say we have fixed these problems, but we haven't. We have very real vulnerabilities. We have not diminished in any way the fervor and ideology of our enemy. We are fighting them in many areas of the world, and I must say with much better awareness of the issues and their nature. We're fighting with better tools. But I cannot say we are now safe from the kind of attack we saw on 9/11. I think we are much safer than we were on 9/11; the ability of our enemies to launch a concerted, sophisticated attack is much less than it was then. Still, we're totally vulnerable to the kinds of attacks we've seen in Madrid, for instance. We face a very sophisticated and intelligent enemy who has been trained, in many cases, in our universities and gone to school on our methods, learned from their mistakes, and continued to use the very nature of our free society and its aversion to intrusion in privacy and discrimination to their benefit...
We have seen throughout the last 20 years a kind of head-in-the-sand approach to national security in the Pentagon. We were comfortable with the existing concept of what the threat was, what threat analysis was, and how we derived our requirements, still using the same old tools we all grew up with. We paid no attention to the real nature of this emerging threat, even though there were warning signs. Many will recall with pain what we went through in the Reagan administration in 1983, when the Marine barracks were bombed in Beirutâ241 Marines and Navy corpsmen were killed. We immediately got an intercept from NSA [National Security Agency], a total smoking gun from the foreign ministry of Iran, ordering the murder of our Marines. Nothing was done to retaliate. Instead, we did exactly what the terrorists wanted us to do, which was to withdraw. Osama bin Laden has cited this as one of his dawning moments. The vaunted United States is a paper tiger; Americans are afraid of casualties; they run like cowards when attacked; and they don't even bother to take their dead with them...
Posted by: tipper ||
05/09/2004 9:38:23 AM ||
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I wish Bush would come out and say this.
Posted by: Infidel Bob ||
05/09/2004 11:41 Comments ||
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From the military.com site you posted - ". . . Our enemy is not terrorism. Our enemy is violent, Islamic fundamentalism. . . . Where are we today? I'd like to say we have fixed these problems, but we haven't. We have very real vulnerabilities. We have not diminished in any way the fervor and ideology of our enemy."
The three points, the enemy is Islamic funamentalism, we have not diminsihed their fervor, and we are still vulnerable. We still greatly underestimate the danger and challenge of this war. We watch the news like its an entertaining documentary, and the politcal debate gives it a moment by moment scorecard. Many view it not as a war, but as mere politics. What do the polls say today? In truth, we are finding that 1) it is not a game; 2) we say we are in a war mode but we very clearly are not; 3) we cavalierly ask our soldiers to risk and sacrifice their lives while a great number or us undermine their efforts; 4) some of think we can defeat the Islamic fundamentalism without truly being in a war mode; and 5) some have this mistaken belief that we can just call it all off when we get tired of it. The sad truth is that Americans, not to mention Europeans, fail to fully appreciate the danger of Islamic fundamentalism. We don't truly believe our lives and freedom are at stake. Because of that, we are not fully committed, and we will end up leaving a festering wound in Iraq that will turn even more Muslims to the fundamentalist side. The events that will finally unite us are unthinkable. Yipes.
#3
Amen, Jake. As you say, some people (and we know who they are) think they can play politics with this situation. Only people who are suicidally oblivious to the threat can imagine they have the luxury of bickering, whining, complaining, demonstrating, undermining, demoralizing, etc. In contrast, those of us who have the appropriate level of fear don't have time for that, our minds are concentrated on survival and how to defeat the enemy.
I suspect he wishes he could say it; but he knows he can't.
Until we can get Iraq settled in good enough shape that we don't have to expend all our energies governing it, we cannot proceed to use Iraq as an American land base for projecting military power in the Middle East; and until we can do that, there is little point in announcing that our real war is against Islamic totalitarianism and that the actual targets of our military power are-- and have been, all along-- Syria, Iran, and Saudi Arabia.
Posted by: Dave D. ||
05/09/2004 14:13 Comments ||
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To reiterate some of the points that Jake made:
This was not state-sponsored terrorism.
This was religious war.
We have not diminished in any way the fervor and ideology of our enemy.
We face a very sophisticated and intelligent enemy who has been trained, in many cases, in our universities and gone to school on our methods, learned from their mistakes, and continued to use the very nature of our free society and its aversion to intrusion in privacy and discrimination to their benefit.
Let's cut to the chase and stop fooling ourselves. We are now engaged in another World War. At the risk of invoking Godwin's Law, some valid parallels to the Nazis are in order:
1.) We face an enemy who is determined to kill everybody that does not adopt their ideology. Coexistence is not an option, assimilation occurs only through conversion
2.) This opponent is virulently anti-Semetic to an irrational degree
3.) Our foe does not blanch at violating all wartime conventions and uses the most barbaric methods to attain their goals
4.) These actions have served to derail world progress against a multitude of pressing issues like famine, disease and illiteracy, to name but a few
5.) Containment is not a functional solution nor is there any viable form of equilibrium attainable against this sort of fanaticism
6.) Global economic recession is a distinct and probable result of continued terror attacks. The current cost is prohibitive as it stands
7.) Our assailants utilize modern technology to create an asymmetrical threat that far exceeds their strength in numbers. Without massive intervention a nuclear terror attack is inevitable
8.) Continued loss of human life on a mass scale is implicit in any delay. Time is most definitely not on our side
9.) Our adversary seeks to install an ultimately repressive form of rule that guarantees a halt to nearly all social advances witnessed in the last century
Bearing in mind these appropriate comparisons, one question remains:
Would any civilized nation on earth sanction the continued operation of a historic religion that overtly permitted avowed Nazis to openly worship within their churches?
This one question identifies a substantial portion of the problem. We are confronted with a major religion which is willing to countenance the presence within both its clergy and adherents of those who undeniably advocate terror. Why is the remaining world obliged to endure such a direct and obvious threat to its own existence?
If there is any sort of acceptable answer to this last question, it needs to be put forth right now. There is no apparent reason for this planet to put up with such an outright assault upon its entire population. A final proof of this is the continuing internecine violence within the Islam's own individual sects. All that we can look forward to is endless mayhem with our own blood running in the gutters alongside that of their fanatics.
This cannot be allowed to pass without violent objection. Our enemy is one of the most brutal sort. Any effective solution will likely require some degree of reciprocal ferocity. If we shrink from responding in a calculated and ruthless nature, then we are essentially doomed by our own forebearance. We have no choice in this matter.
To continue with World War II analogies, we must grapple with solutions on a par to the nuclear attacks upon Japan. Those atomic bombs save countless lives of both American soldiers and Japanese civilians alike. Again, the similarities are plentiful. Like Japan's civilian population, Islam's believers largely embrace the violent mentality of Jihad. The few voices of moderation from within are forcefully stifled. Instead, we face an organized assemblage of both antagonists and their supporters.
To defeat this group conventionally we must contend with possible loss of life in monstrous numbers. This penalty is only augmented by the enormous economic pricetag that accompanies it. Is it worth enduring such untold tragedy merely to seek some sort of nonexistent equipoise with an enemy who will only endeavor to attack us further?
We are obliged to seek less than conventional approaches in solving this problem. Any lackluster attitude will carry along with it a severe price. Unlike Japan, there is not an immediate need to begin nuclear attacks against our foe. However, now is the correct time to begin making clear that nuclear retaliation is on the table. Like Japan, we must seek to dismantle or neutralize the religious underpinnings that serve to drive our opponents. Because there is no single ruling body or central council that governs Islam, we are obliged to address it at a component level. There are distinct and substantial elements that lend themselves to ready identification. In order of importance to Islam itself, they are:
A.) Islam's major religious shrines
B.) Those governments that harbor and abet Islamist terror
C.) Clerical leaders of the Muslim faith
D.) All individual houses of Islamic worship
These are the fulcrums against which our levers must be set. Due to the intentionally asymmetric threat posed by Islamist terror, it is not practible or prudent to pursue each instance of it on an individual basis. Such a reactive stance is merely playing the victim and naught else. Just as terror attacks are leveled indiscriminately, it will likely prove necessary to apply blanket solutions in our attempts to remediate this global poison. Any aversion to this will only assure other major atrocities.
The four constituent parts of Islamic faith listed above concomitantly engender some basic solutions to the threats they pose. In the broadest possible terms, these are:
I.) Holding the major Islamic shrines hostage, either through military occupation or the overt threat of denial by way of contamination or obliteration
II.) Elimination of those governments which sponsor Islamic terror through direct military attacks upon their assembled leadership
III.) The arrest and confinement of all Islamic clergy who advocate violent jihad
IV.) Closure or demolition of all mosques
Each of these solutions carry with them huge implications. The military occupation of Saudi Arabia and its shrines would represent a massive campaign fraught with the threat of constant outside attack. It is for this reason that I advocate holding these shrines hostage under threat of retaliation in kind or assured destruction.
Elimination of foreign governments who sponsor Islamic terror poses the looming problem of creating numerous power vacuums that might be occupied by equally hostile opponents. Such attacks would have to be accompanied by crippling blows to the military engines of those regimes.
As we descend this scale the solutions become more unwieldy. The arrest and confinement of aggressive clerics and advocates of jihad is less simple and more time consuming. The civilized world's disdain for religious repression is exactly what Islamists rely upon to thwart such a large scale purge. This, despite the fact that Islamists seek to impose the most repressive form of religious theocracy. The irony of this one simple fact alone pretty much justifies the dismantling of Islam.
A complete purge of all Islamic institutions is the most difficult to implement. Due to underground and clandestine assembly of believers it would be the least effective though most visible solution. However, there must occur a dismantling of this violent religion to some degree, whatever it may be.
I do not believe that either America or the world has the time to squander in going about a sequential rout of each individual government that sponsors Islamic terror. Within the timeframe of such a ponderous and lengthy program it is nearly assured that large scale biochemical, radiological or nuclear attacks will happen. Because America epitomizes all the advances and plenitude that our terrorist foes do not have and will likely never attain we shall remain their most prominent target.
As Islamic terror's principal objective, it may well be necessary for America to act unilaterally in the imposition of a credible deterrent or outright military action against all sponsoring nations. This was the case with Iraq and our great difficulty in making forward progress there should serve as a bellwether regarding any attempts to progressively campaign against that region's hostile regimes.
A broader approach is demanded if we are to have any hope of subduing our foes. I fail to see why America or the globe must sit around and wait for a massive biochemical, radiological or nuclear upon one of its principal cities before taking some of the measures mentioned here. This is an excessive price to pay in order to show restraint against those who have openly avowed to orchestrate such attacks at their earliest convenience.
Islam is rapidly anointing itself for complete and total destruction. With each passing day and every new atrocity they further negate any collective worth they have to this planet. I refuse to sit idly by and calmly accept that such an unworthy opponent should be left free to wreak havoc upon the people and economies of this world. There has yet to manifest any sort of concerted effort by Islam to rid itself of the thugs who are hijacking their faith. Such complacency in the face of so dire an internal threat to the credibility and moral authority of their church inevitably must be interpreted as willing collaboration and nothing else.
Time is running out. Who shall it run out for? Millions of innocents in some metropolis that will be poisoned or vaporized in a major terror attack or the terrorists and their entire corrupted religion? I do not see where there is any alternative.
AMROZI, the Bali bomber now on death row, believes "Australia will get hit" by a terrorist attack, possibly in the lead-up to the next Federal Election. More than 18 months after the Sari Club and Paddyâs bar were ripped apart, the man known as the smiling assassin remains defiant, pledging to continue the fight against "Jews and Americans" until his dying day. In an interview in jail, Amrozi, his brother Mukhlas and co-conspirator Imam Samudra, said the murders in Bali were revenge for "Americaâs crusade" against Muslims. Asked if he had a message for the Australian Government, Samudra said: "There are a billion Imam Samudras around the world, even inside Australia . . . ready to attack and kill John Howard, Bush, Colin Powell . . . Tony Blair." And he declared he was delighted with the results of the bombings he organised.
Sporting his infamous grin, Amrozi said he would be "disappointed" if not executed.
I certainly hope he's not disappointed...
The trio said while the Bali bombings were not specifically aimed at Australia, the country should expect a direct attack if it continued its alliance with the US. The men are held in Kerobokan prison, a short drive from the site of the 2002 blasts. Amrozi sang a song outlining his views, an act for which he has become renowned. In a nursery rhyme voice, he sang, "Jews and Americans, I will fight with all my might; Australia, my enemy till the end of time; my time is ending soon; I will be wounded and my eyes will close", in reference to his looming execution by firing squad.
Posted by: tipper ||
05/09/2004 2:36:20 AM ||
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wouldn't want to disappoint him....leave his corpse for wild pigs to devour
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/09/2004 9:23 Comments ||
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until his dying day ...
Isn't this sh!tstain supposed to be ventilated in the very near future? Allowing such inflammatory spewing like this to be published is tantamount to condoning its intentions. Why is this turd even allowed to communicate with the outside world?
Because not a single hostage should be taken if other terrorists decide to seek Amrozi's release. Snuffing the b@stard takes him out of the loop in a truly permanent fashion.
Watch your butt Zenster. Throw the pork chop to the right.
You'll have to yank it out of my cold, dead, greasy, barbecue sauce stained hand first!
The surprise!... My heart!... Quick, Ethel! My pills!
Qaeda-linked terrorists are recruiting Muslim converts in the Philippines through a network of charities, according to security officials and an intelligence report obtained by The Associated Press. One of the charities was founded by Mohammad Jamal Khalifa, brother-in-law of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
And nobody's gotten around to shutting it down yet?
Converts to Islam in the predominantly Roman Catholic country of the Philippines are valuable because they know the lay of the land and can tap into local information and have contacts and access, the authorities said. "When they use converts, it means they are using people who are familiar with Manila, with Cebu, with the Christian-dominated centers," National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales warned at a recent forum. Police said one, Redendo Cain Dellosa, confessed that he planted a bomb on a ferry which caught fire two months ago, killing more than 100 people. Dellosa's lawyer called it a false confession extracted under torture.
It usually is, isn't it?
Government officials estimate the Philippines has about 200,000 Muslim converts, many who worked as migrant laborers in the Middle East before returning to join the nation's 8 million-strong Islamic community. Philippine Muslims are dwarfed by the sheer numbers of Christians in this nation of 84 million, but convert groups get by on funds from Arab benefactors and tithing from Muslims in the Middle East.
That's who usually funds Islam's bloody borders...
The government intelligence report identified the Fi Sabilillah Dawah and Media Foundation as the main local advocate of a radical Muslim convert movement in Christian-dominated Manila and Luzon island. The group has been headed since 1998 by a man authorities suspect is a terrorist, Ahmad Santos, who is now in hiding. Police and soldiers recently raided the foundation's mosque and office in suburban Quezon City, seizing firearms, explosives and videotapes of jihad activities. Police arrested Santos' two wives, but they were released on bail. The March report links Fi Sabilillah officers to bin Laden's al Qaeda. Fi Sabilillah also has been tied to the Southeast Asian terror group Jemaah Islamiyah, other fundamentalist groups and a network of foundations set up by bin Laden's brother-in-law, Mohammad Jamal Khalifa. Santos refused to meet with AP. But a Fi Sabilillah officer, Yusuf Ledesma, denied charges of terrorism and said the Muslim group is being unfairly targeted by a government attempt to whip up anti-Islam hysteria. "They really have no proof that Fi Sabilillah has ever been involved in any terrorist act," Ledesma told AP. "They seem to be using us as props in a propaganda war."
"Lies! All lies!"
Ledesma accused police of planting guns and explosives in the Fi Sabilillah office and torturing converts into admitting terror activities. The intelligence report claims that two Islamic schools, or madrassas, in the northern provinces of Pangasinan and Tarlac, were run by Santos and provided paramilitary training for Muslim converts. Eight converts -- including the alleged ferry bomber, Dellosa -- were arrested in a 2002 raid on the madrassa in Pangasinan, but were released. The intelligence report said the men arrested in 2002 admitted membership in a group known as the Rajah Sulaiman Movement, whose primary objective is to establish Islamic cities on Luzon island in the Christian-dominated north. A secondary goal is to carry out terror attacks in the north, taking attention away from predominantly Muslim areas of the south.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
05/09/2004 2:10:08 AM ||
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Wotta surprise. (NOT!)
And they're recruiting them here, too.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
05/09/2004 11:27 Comments ||
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Members of the Abu Sayyaf Muslim extremist group are threatening to disrupt Monday's elections in two towns in the southern Philippines. Extra troops have been deployed and security measures implemented to protect the polls on Basilan island from threats by Abu Black, an Abu Sayyaf commander, Colonel Rey Ferrer said. Ferrer said Abu Black had been intimidating people in the towns of Tipo-Tipo and Sumisip. "Intelligence reports said the rebels were planning to attack and disturb the national elections on Monday. We are now in red alert," Ferrer told reporters in Basilan. Members of the group have also been known to hire themselves out as enforcers for local political warlords.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
05/09/2004 2:08:56 AM ||
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Iran's hard-line ruling Guardian Council has passed a law banning the use of torture, effective immediately, a judiciary official said Sunday. The council, which rejected at least three similar proposals in the past, approved the law's Thursday — one day after Iran's judiciary chief ordered it, said Nasser Hosseini, a judiciary official. "For courts, it's obligatory to implement the law after it is approved by the Guardian Council," he said.
Human rights groups have long complained about the use of torture against detainees, including intellectuals and political activists. In November, a special U.N. envoy visited Iran and said he received "many complaints" about human rights violations, including torture, from pro-reform dissidents, writers and activists. Hard-line officials have denied the practice. "I hope the law provides enough protection for prisoners who have complained about torture," reformist lawmaker Rajab Ali Mazroui said. Iran's bleak human rights record was highlighted recently by the case of Iranian-Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi, who died in July about three weeks after being detained for taking photographs outside a Tehran prison during anti-establishment protests. The case prompted an international outcry and became part of a bitter power struggle between Iranian reformists and conservative elements of the Shiite Muslim-dominated country's establishment.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/09/2004 4:06:12 PM ||
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Didn't Iran just deny that it has any political prisoners? This, despite worldwide condemnation over Iran having some 30,000 of them. Let's not overlook reports of mass executions either.
Hearing Iran decry torture is like listening to a soccer hooligan denounce getting drunk at a match.
Concerns are growing that Al Qaeda or a related group could detonate a "dirty bomb" that would spew radioactive fallout across an American or European city, according to intelligence analysts, diplomats and independent nuclear experts. Intelligence agencies have reported no reliable, specific threats involving dirty bombs or nuclear weapons, but senior U.S. and European officials and outside experts said several factors had heightened fears in recent weeks. They said concerns were focused on three Al Qaeda operatives who led experiments involving dirty bombs and chemical weapons and on widely held suspicions that a special wing of the terrorist network was planning a spectacular attack. They also said that chatter justifying the use of nuclear weapons against the U.S. had increased on radical Islamic websites as the occupation of Iraq stretches into its second year.
One focus of anxiety is the Athens Olympic Games in August. Recent security exercises there concentrated on mock attacks involving a dirty bomb, a chemical explosion and a hijacked jetliner. Another potential target is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit scheduled for June in Istanbul, Turkey, which will be attended by President Bush. The threat was underlined by Turkey's disclosure Monday that it had arrested members of a group linked to Al Qaeda who reportedly planned to bomb the summit.
The threat of attack is great enough that a senior European intelligence official said it is "not a matter of if there is a nuclear-related attack by Al Qaeda, but when it occurs." The warning echoed remarks made last June by Eliza Manningham-Buller, director of Britain's domestic intelligence service, MI5. She said renegade scientists have aided Al Qaeda's efforts to develop chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons, sometimes referred to as CBRN. "Sadly, given the widespread proliferation of the technical knowledge to construct these weapons, it will only be a matter of time before a crude version of a CBRN attack is launched at a major Western city and only a matter of time before that crude version becomes something more sophisticated," she told a London think tank.
Experts inside and outside government said sophisticated extremists have the ability to plan and execute the detonation of a dirty bomb. They had no answer for why a dirty bomb has not been unleashed. "I'm very surprised that a radiological device hasn't gone off," said Matthew Bunn, a nuclear expert at Harvard's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. "There is a bigger puzzle â why no Al Qaeda attacks since Sept. 11 in the U.S.?" The European intelligence official said planning for a large-scale attack has suffered setbacks with the arrests of numerous Al Qaeda operatives. But, he added, "the division is still focused on spectaculars, and they take three or four years to plan and execute."
U.S. intelligence has long known that Al Qaeda coveted a nuclear weapon, but there is no evidence that it has succeeded in getting one. "We won't know if Al Qaeda has its hands on this kind of material until it is too late," said M.J. Gohel, head of the Asia-Pacific Foundation in London. Building a dirty bomb is far easier, and the terrorist network's attempts to do so have been documented through evidence uncovered in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Three men identified as Al Qaeda's weapons of mass destruction committee would likely plan the attack, said two European intelligence officials and independent experts. The committee leader is Midhat Mursi, an Egyptian chemical engineer also known as Abu Khabab. Officials said he is regarded as Al Qaeda's master bomb builder and is one of the group's most-wanted fugitives â although there have been unconfirmed reports that Mursi is in U.S. custody.
A second member is Assadalah Abdul Rahman, a son of Omar Abdul Rahman, the blind Egyptian cleric convicted in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. The son ran a camp near Jalalabad, Afghanistan, that provided training in chemical weapons.
The third was identified as Abu Bashir Yemeni, who also worked in the Afghan training camps and at a house in Kabul, the Afghan capital, that authorities suspect was the committee's headquarters. Documents describing research into chemical weapons and dirty bombs were discovered in the house by CNN in late 2001. In caves used by Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, U.S. troops also found detailed instructions on how to manufacture and deploy a dirty bomb.
Much of Al Qaeda's leadership has been destroyed, but counter-terrorism experts said the organization is divided into two tiers. The more visible wing is loosely aligned with other extremist groups and helps organize small-scale attacks on "soft targets," such as the conventional bombings in Bali, Indonesia; Casablanca, Morocco; Istanbul; and Madrid. Long-term planning for a bigger attack in the U.S. or Europe is being carried out by a second core group of experienced Al Qaeda figures, including the weapons committee, according to the European intelligence official and two counter-terrorism experts. "There is a sense that one part of Al Qaeda is waiting and putting into place the big, spectacular attack," said Magnus Ranstorp, director of the Center for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. "It will come out of left field, and it may well be a dirty bomb."
U.S. authorities say they thwarted the beginnings of a dirty bomb plot with the arrest of Jose Padilla in Chicago in May 2002. Al Qaeda leaders had sent Padilla, a U.S. citizen, on a reconnaissance mission, authorities say. He is being held as an enemy combatant. U.S. officials are concerned that the material is within reach of Islamic extremists and Chechen rebels in the Pankisi Gorge, a remote area near Georgia's border with the breakaway Russian republic of Chechnya. Chechen rebels were responsible for the only known incident involving a dirty bomb. In 1995, they planted an explosive device containing cesium in a Moscow park, then informed reporters of its location before it was detonated. Authorities believe that the tipoff was a warning but that the Chechens were not prepared to risk the retaliation likely to be provoked by detonating a dirty bomb.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
05/09/2004 10:12:14 AM ||
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Therefore our enlightened leaders continue to permit Wahabi terrorists to operate most mosques in the Free World. When stupidity prospers, none dare call it stupidity.
Posted by: Man Bites Dog ||
05/09/2004 10:30 Comments ||
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I'm wonering if the reason there's been no RDD attcks yet is b'cause the jihadis start playing with the pretty glowing powder and...
It makes sense in light of all the problems associated with the red wire/ black wire thing.
"never ascribe to enemy action that which can be attributed to your own stupidity/ignorance."
-from many postings on .military.hist on usenet
Posted by: N Guard ||
05/09/2004 10:41 Comments ||
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The threat of attack is great enough that a senior European intelligence official said it is "not a matter of if there is a nuclear-related attack by Al Qaeda, but when it occurs."
So long as Europe is still willing to support terror groups like the Palestinian Authority they will not comprehend their vulnerability.
Authorities believe that the tipoff was a warning but that the Chechens were not prepared to risk the retaliation likely to be provoked by detonating a dirty bomb.
Considering how the Soviets responded to a Palestinian kidnapping of their diplomats in 1985, the Chechens' hesitation to unleash a radiological device in Moscow seems rather well founded. Too bad American and Europe have yet to see the wisdom of devastating retaliation. Yes, it's harsh but I can foresee few other, if any, solutions to deterring Islamist terror.
Terrorist detonation of a radiological device should result in Medina or Mecca (or both) being dusted with quantities of the exact same isotope. Let Islam experience the joy of spending billions to decontaminate their precious shrines. At some point reciprocity in the form of retaliation-in-kind will have to appear on the table. I vote for sooner than later.
#5
Admiral Zenni, Vladimir's vicious and heavy-handed put-down of the "insurrection" in Chechnya hasn't been that successful and it certainly didn't stop the Islamists from taking 800 people hostage in a Moscow theatre + pulling off scores of other attacks.
The Al Queda-linked Chechen terrorists haven't pulled off a nuke attack, yet, but they've killed lots of Russians other ways, including offing the Chechen president today.
I *knew* you'd have to post on this thread!
The Bush Administration has people working 24/7 both at home and abroad to make sure there isn't an NBC attack here at home.
Short of putting a Super Patriot Act in place here and basically putting America under lockdown, which is neither constitutional nor practical, and adopting a preemptive nuke attack strategy abroad--as you keep screaming about--we're doing all that is humanly possible.
If we were to nuke Mecca to avoid a nuke attack here, we really would be as awful as our enemies suggest and they would surely hate us then and with excellent reason.
Iraq and Afghanistan are where we need to be, where our soldiers are taking on the Islamofascists there and not here in the streets of America.
Posted by: Jen ||
05/09/2004 20:51 Comments ||
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I hope that the Israelis, in addition to preparing to take out Iranian facilities, are also quietly letting it be known that the first nuke aimed at Israel from anyone - source unimportant - gets a couple of nukes dropped squarely on Mecca. If they let it be known that screwing with them, nuclear-wise, gets your "holy" black rock vaporized, Allah willing or not, it would be interesting to see who still thinks nuking Israel is a good idea.
- Barbara Skolaut -
Barbara: I'd hope the USA would (quietly, privately and diplomatically, of course) adopt the same policy you recommended for Israel: should a smuggled or otherwise-delivered nuclear device ever be detonated on American soil, the 'holy shrines' of the cities of both Mecca and Medina immediately become very shiny and highly radioactive glass. Bummer for the following year's Hadj, though...
- BK -
Oops, I thought I was supposed to be the only misguided soul around here recommending retaliation-in-kind. Guess I'm not alone.
#7
Zippy, we've been over this before...at great length.
The problem is determining which rogue state is behind the bomb, if it occurs.
Zeroing in on Mecca & Medina regardless of which state is the sponsor just to punish Islam as a whole really isn't and shouldn't be much of an option to us.
Posted by: Jen ||
05/09/2004 22:02 Comments ||
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Last December, Brynjar Lia, an analyst at the private Norwegian Defense Research Establishment, came across a 42-page document in Arabic on the Global Islamic Media Web site, one of many Islamist sites that he routinely surveys for his research on terrorism. Entitled "Jihadi Iraq: Hopes and Dangers" and produced by someone claiming to be part of the Mujahideen Services Center, the document outlined a strategy for breaking up the U.S.-led coalition by directing "painful strikes" at America's allies, particularly Spain. Although impressed by its sophisticated analysis of Spain's domestic politics, Lia concluded that the paper's focus on jihadist activities inside Iraq, where foreign fighters were already attacking coalition partners, would come as little news to the larger intelligence community. "I mentioned it to my wife," Lia recalls, "but only to her."
After the Madrid bombings on March 11, however, Lia recalled other salient aspects of "Jihadi Iraq" that he had earlier skimmed over. He and a colleague, Thomas Hegghammer, returned to the document and this time came to a startling conclusion. In both style and substance, the article seemed to bear the markings of an authoritative statement of al Qaeda strategy. Announcing their findings to the Norwegian media, Lia and Hegghammer also posted an overview of their analysis on their institute's Web site on March 19. Since then, the Norwegians have been fielding queries from various intelligence agencies (they won't say which) while scholars and counterterrorism experts have weighed in on the article's significance.
But why didn't Lia grasp the document's apparent importance immediately? His initial hesitation underscores the difficulties intelligence analysts face in monitoring a foe whose tactics constantly evolve within an ideological framework that is itself strategically flexible. Those problems are compounded by the chaotic nature of the Internet, which has become one of the jihadists' preferred means of communication. "There are literally hundreds of Islamist Web sites and, at times, up to 50 different addresses related to al Qaeda alone," says Gabriel Weimann, a fellow at the United States Institute of Peace who has been tracking Internet sites for seven years in his work on terrorism and the mass media. "The great challenge is telling who is authentic and who should be analyzed."
What struck the Norwegians most on their second reading of the document was that the author of "Jihadi Iraq" seemed to be suggesting that attacks might be necessary beyond Iraq. In fact, the anonymous writer laments "the lack of direct influence of Iraq events on life in Spain," broadly implying that the "painful strikes" should hit closer to home. He also emphasizes that the strikes should take place around the time of the elections. "We think that the Spanish government could not tolerate more than two, maximum three, blows after which it will have to withdraw as a result of popular pressure," he continues. "If its troops still remain in Iraq after these blows, then the victory of the Socialist Party is almost secured, and the withdrawal of the Spanish forces will be on its electoral program."
That is not the only passage that appears to have had consequences. The author also advises Sunni jihadists in Iraq to put aside their historic differences with the Shiites and "if possible draw them into combat with the Americans." According to Lia, in September 2003, when the document was purportedly written, such counsel represented a pragmatic shift in al Qaeda policy, which previously reflected Wahhabi-style Islam's contempt for Shiites as takfir, or apostates. But to make such an authoritative decision--and one that appears to have been heeded--suggests that the author had credible standing.
I don't think that al-Qaeda is honestly too terribly keen on the Shi'ite/Sunni divide except with affiliate groups like the LeJ in Pakistan. My guess is that the author is Saif al-Adel, as he's engaged in this type of analysis and the like before and seems to view himself as al-Qaeda grand strategist. Plus he's currently based out of Iran so it's clear that he and other top al-Qaeda brass haven't gotten too firmly entrenched in the sectarian divide. Failing that, it might be al-Muqrin or Amer Azizi.
Even without subsequent events in Spain and Iraq seeming to confirm the document's authority, "Jihadi Iraq" provides other hints of its legitimacy, say Lia and Hegghammer. For example, its reference to the Mujahideen Services Center appears to be an intentional echo of the Mujahideen Services Bureau, the predecessor of al Qaeda set up in Pakistan during the anti-Soviet struggles in Afghanistan. And the paper is dedicated to Yusuf al-Ayiri, who was considered a direct link between bin Laden and the jihadist movement in the Arabian peninsula before he was killed by Saudi security forces last June. Al-Ayiri also ran what was once the premier al Qaeda Web site, Alneda, and arguments from his tracts on holy war are quoted throughout "Jihadi Iraq."
Many experts argue that the use of insider references and coded language, often deriving from Islamic theology and history, is one way of signaling and responding to directions within the jihadist network. "I think there is a set of fingerprints and symbols that identify statements as authoritative," says David Cook, a professor of religious studies at Rice University who has studied the evolution of radical Islamist thought since the defeat of the Taliban. Indeed, the man who appeared on videotape to claim responsibility for the Madrid bombings identified himself as Abu Dujana al-Afghani, which Lia and Hegghammer say may echo the document's reference to Abu Dujana, a companion of the prophet Mohammed known as a particularly fierce fighter.
Not everyone buys this textual parsing, however. Adam Dolnik, a fellow at the Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies in Singapore, told the British online magazine Spiked that the references to the Services Center and al-Ayiri were "not particularly telling." Analysts at the Central Intelligence Agency also found the article unremarkable, "a document like any number of other documents," says one intelligence official. Even Weimann notes that Global Islamic Media is not thought to be one of the official al Qaeda Web sites. But at the very least, "Jihadi Iraq" complicates the accepted wisdom that began to form shortly after the destruction of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan--that the radical Islamist threat is now not so much from al Qaeda, the organization, but from a growing movement of loosely affiliated groups. Just last month, Ambassador J. Cofer Black, the State Department's counterterrorism coordinator, testified before Congress that antiterrorism operations had decimated and isolated the al Qaeda leadership, resulting in what Black calls "a lack of clear strategic direction" within the jihadist movement.
But some experts see disturbing signs of continued strategic coordination. Husain Haqqani, a Pakistani journalist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who has written about "Jihadi Iraq," suggests that the article might come from someone in an informal network of al Qaeda sympathizers, a kind of electronic think tank. What is most striking to Haqqani, however, is the clarity, coherence, and effectiveness of al Qaeda strategy, whether it is formulated by al Qaeda cadres or by fellow travelers. "The biggest problem for those fighting radical Islam," Haqqani says, "is that the ideology that feeds al Qaeda has never been focused upon."
Except for al-Muhajiroun, which is part and parcel of al-Qaeda anyway, I haven't seen any strategy formulated by fellow travelers. Or have I been missing something? I haven't even seen anything similar by JI or MILF, though that may be because I don't know where to look...
That ideology, many analysts hold, is one big reason that radical Islamists did not splinter into mutually recriminating factions after the great losses in Afghanistan. Cook, for one, gives large credit to the jihadists' resourceful use of traditional models of resistance dating from the earliest days of Islam. Even the post-Afghanistan shift from al Qaeda as a vanguard organization to al Qaeda as an ideological resource for freelance operations is rooted in the military strategies pursued by Mohammed and his followers after suffering a major defeat in the battle of Uhud in A.D. 625.
What the ideological al Qaeda does so successfully is to tap into its own radical reading of the Islamic heritage to formulate and validate its plans toward the larger goal of uniting Muslims in one state living under strict religious rule. As a first step in countering this ideological campaign, which appears to be swaying even many moderates, Western intelligence services, Cook says, "should be learning how to interpret and decipher the authority of these strategic documents." If it remains difficult to determine with certainty whether a particular document is authoritative, it is possible, both Cook and Weimann suggest, to discern which documents bear the markings of an authoritative voice. But what should intelligence agencies do with this information? Obviously, Weimann says, they should share it among themselves and with allies. And they should make the jihadist strategies more widely known. "Maybe more public awareness of the ideas in the document would not have prevented the bombings in Madrid," Weimann says. "But the Spanish people might have been more aware of who was targeting them and why they were being targeted." And maybe more reluctant to fulfill al Qaeda's apparent wishes.
Sharing info actually appears to work wonders IMO. A lot of Europeans, I suspect, wouldn't be too happy about how chummy their governments were with Iran if they knew that the mullahs were hosting the main drivers behind 3/11. There is so much information out there on the nature and composition of the enemy that simply is not getting out to the general population. IIRC, back during WW2 they had these wonderful little information films that discussed the scope of the Axis threat as far as what the Allies were up against in fairly concise but accurate detail. Maybe it might be time to reintroduce the practice?
I have my doubts the West, even the USA, is going to do that. The government, wrongly, I believe, continues trying to insulate the population from the war. On the other hand, face-to-face intel discussions between analysts (not division chiefs or higher) at the expert level is meat and potatoes. I never returned from a trip for discussions with my counterparts without a better understanding of my subject area, and the benefits flowed both ways. But every year, in every budget cycle, travel budgets were among the first to be nicked.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
05/09/2004 1:42:02 AM ||
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#1
It's long past time to distribute information like this to the public but it's unfortunately still a political impossibility as any attempt to do so would be met with deafening cries of "Racism!" and "Biggotry!" from the left as it would necessarily have to deal with the tenets of Islam which give rise to groups like al Qaeda. I fear it's going to take an event of horrific proportion to galvanize public opinion to the point where an open discussion of the nature of the enemy is possible.
#2
Which is why I think there will be no horrific attack on the U.S.,in the short term. Why would al Qaeda help to galvanize public opinion like it did on 9-11? They won't.
No, they will let us devour each other politically. They are much more calculating than we know. We are the jackasses for failing to recognize this. We are in some deep crap. God bless GW and the troops.
#3
Dan- IIRC, back during WW2 they had these wonderful little information films that discussed the scope of the Axis threat as far as what the Allies were up against in fairly concise but accurate detail. Maybe it might be time to reintroduce the practice?
Those were the 'Why We Fight' series, directed by Frank Capra. They are masterpieces of propaganda (I do not mean that in the pejorative sense, but rather in the technical) that did an excellent job of showing the average American what we were up against.
Keep in mind though that the scripts for the first three films were rejected because of what Capra himself called 'Communist influence' - and Capra was no conservative, either. After those scripts were canned, Capra always met with subdued resistance from some writers and producers in making the films, and on several occasions he had to resort to reminders that there was a war on, and the Government could always take over production - and the studio.
And that would seem to me to be the problem here. Any attempt at a modern 'WWF' series would be met with horrified shock by modern Hollywood, which seems to consider Michael Moore as an utterly truthful and guileless crusader for right.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
05/09/2004 18:48 Comments ||
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#4
His initial hesitation underscores the difficulties intelligence analysts face in monitoring a foe whose tactics constantly evolve within an ideological framework that is itself strategically flexible.
Such continual evolution and flexibility must be met with an overarching and inflexible set of responses. I've been doing my best to oultine potential candidates in both the Simulation Gives Glimpse of Nuke Terror and 'Our Enemy Is Not Terrorism' threads. Few people here (or anywhere else for that matter) have provided much in the way of effective alternative strategies. I am still wide-open to anything that can achieve these same results with less chaos.
As AzCat said:
I fear it's going to take an event of horrific proportion to galvanize public opinion to the point where an open discussion of the nature of the enemy is possible.
I don't "fear" this, I know it. Somehow, world leadership needs to be snapped wide awake regarding the pervasive and fatal toxin that global terror represents. If it requires an announcement by the United States that any further atrocities will result in unilateral retaliation against Islamic holy sites, so be it.
The clock is running out fast and the current set of tools being employed in our war on terror are woefully inadequate to the task (through no fault of our military). We are confronted with random and vicious brutality which demands a ruthless ferocity that many have not seen since the end of WWII. There is absolutely no logic in waiting until after an American or foreign city is entirely destroyed before asserting a policy of forceful and harsh countermeasures. We already have proof enough of what sort of harm is headed our way.
#5
Mike, great background...and you know who headed up Hollywood during WWII (as a member of the military), don't you?
Of course, future President Ronald Reagan.
Posted by: Jen ||
05/09/2004 18:55 Comments ||
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#6
Zipperhead, how many times have you been told to cool your jets?
We are doing quite a lot to try and ensure that the IslamoNazis don't stage a successful NBC attack on this country with as vigorous a use as we can get from both Homeland Security and the Patriot Act.
At the same time, both our forces stationed overseas in the Middle East and in joint operations with Coalition member countries are working to interdict the enemy with NBC weapons abroad.
We don't know how many such attacks have already been aborted through good detective work and surveillance.
To suggest that the Bush ("Shrub" to you) Administration is really doing nothing about this, is just flat out wrong.
Posted by: Jen ||
05/09/2004 19:05 Comments ||
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#7
I think we should leave the middle east alone completely. Let the neighbouring tribes kill each other off, just like they did in Chechnia before the Russians whent in. Let them concentrate on self destruction instead of vowing revenge on the people who don't care about anything other then what CNN tells them.
Posted by: Fem Fatalle ||
05/09/2004 19:05 Comments ||
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#8
Dammit Zenster I said throw the pork chop to the right! The Right!
#9
Miss Jen -
Thank you, Ma'am! Captain Reagan's training films were widely regarded as the most effective - not because of their information, but because surveys of the troops they were aimed at (especially pilots) said that Reagan was the most believable as a typical AMerican soldier, sailor, airman, or Marine.
He had the right touch even then.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
05/09/2004 22:57 Comments ||
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A legislator from the Gaza Strip, whose offices were raided by gunmen on Saturday night, has called on the Palestinian Authority to investigate into the incident. Eyewitnesses said 12 Fatah gunmen broke into the offices of Jamilah Saidam, a female representative of the Deir el-Balah district in the Palestinian Legislative Council, beating some of the workers and destroying furniture and documents. Saidam, who is also a member of Fatah, was not in the office at the time. They said the attackers also fired several shots and hurled a stun grenade into the building in central Gaza before leaving. The assault is seen as part of a power struggle between rival Fatah militia in the Gaza Strip. Talaat Musleh, the director of Saidam's office, said a dozen gunmen stormed the offices in the morning. "The first thing they did was to remove a picture of her husband, Mamdouh Saidam, and trample on it," he said. Mamdouh was a senior Fatah activist who was killed by the IDF in Lebanon about two decades ago.
According to the eyewitnesses, the gunmen closed the street where Saidam's offices are located before storming the building. "They were armed with pistols and automatic rifles," said one eyewitness. "They told us that they belong to Fatah." Saidam condemned the attackers as "suspicious elements trying to drag the Palestinians into a civil war." She said she contacted the commanders of all PA security forces in the Gaza Strip and urged them to arrest the assailants and those behind them. "The gunmen did not make any demands," Saidam added. She pointed out, however, that a senior Fatah activist approached her last week seeking financial aid from PA Chairman Yasser Arafat for his wedding party. Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip refer to their legislators seeking financial aid from Arafat and the PA. The aid is often approved at the recommendation of the legislators.
Saidam described the ripping up of her husband's picture as a "despicable act," noting that he was one of the founders of Fatah's Al-Asifa militia, which operated in Lebanon and Syria in the 1970s and 80s. The PLC issued a statement strongly condemning the attack and calling on the PA security forces to stop armed thugs from roaming the streets of the Gaza Strip. The statement noted that this was not the first time gunmen had attacked the offices of a PLC member. "Such attacks obstruct the work of the Palestinian legislator, defame the PA and harm the feelings of the people who elected their representatives in a democratic and free vote," the statement added. Adnan Issa, a senior Fatah official in the Gaza Strip, said the attack reflected the state of lawlessness and chaos prevalent in the PA-controlled territories.
A group called "The Honorable in Fatah" claimed responsibility for the attack on Saidam's offices, accusing her and other senior Fatah officials of corruption. "The giant Fatah has risen and decided to expel the corrupt elements in Fatah," the hitherto unknown group said in a leaflet distributed in the Gaza Strip. It said the attack was meant to deliver a warning to all those who are exploiting the people and harming their interests.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/09/2004 9:34:27 PM ||
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#1
Today's special: One civil war coming up - extra heavy on the violence, with a side of murder.
It said the attack was meant to deliver a warning to all those who are exploiting the people and harming their interests.
That would be Fatah, Hamas, Hezbollah, the PA, Syria, Egypt, Arabia, Iran, etc. They're warning themselves?
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
05/09/2004 22:08 Comments ||
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Has Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat agreed to move from Ramallah to the Gaza Strip? Some PA officials said Sunday that Egyptian Intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, who is expected to visit Ramallah soon, will suggest taking Arafat to the Gaza Strip in an Egyptian military helicopter. They said the proposal is aimed at preventing an IDF raid on Arafat's headquarters. "There are rumors that the Egyptians are trying to work out a deal that would allow Arafat to move to the Gaza Strip without being harmed," said one official. He said he did not know if Arafat would accept the proposal.
My guess is that he won't...
Another senior PA official said Egypt was holding behind-the-scenes talks with the PA and Israel in order to prevent a situation where the IDF would move into the compound. "The Egyptian government is worried that [Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon would try to assassinate or deport Arafat," he explained. "They are aware that such a move would lead to a serious deterioration in the region."
We're talkin' serious negative numbers here...
The official confirmed that Suleiman is planning to visit Ramallah, but said no date has been set yet. He said the Egyptian emissary would deliver an important message from President Hosni Mubarak to Arafat, but refused to elaborate. Quoting Palestinian sources in Ramallah, the Lebanese daily newspaper An-Nahar reported Sunday that Suleiman will arrive to Ramallah aboard an Egyptian military helicopter to transfer Arafat to the Gaza Strip. The paper said the move was designed to prevent an Israeli attack on Arafat's compound.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/09/2004 9:29:18 PM ||
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Makes sense they'd offer this (as much as anything any of them does makes sense).
After all, Ara-Rat is Egyptian.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
05/09/2004 21:37 Comments ||
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that's the cover story--they and he want to get to gaza so he can set up a new power base there--and better fight hamas etc for the spoils that will occur when israel leaves and gaza is expanded with the egyptian landswap for parts of jewish sinai--that's the real game
Posted by: SON OF TOLUI ||
05/10/2004 1:26 Comments ||
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The militaryâs campaign to register foreign militants hiding in South Waziristan took a severe blow on Sunday when Nek Muhammad, a former Taliban commander who signed a peace deal with the government, said that the registration of militants was not part of the deal. In an interview with Daily Times by phone from an undisclosed location in Waziristan, Nek said that Peshawar Corps Commander Lt Gen Safdar Hussain violated the agreement by demanding foreignersâ registration. âThere was no such condition in the deal,â he said. âThis is his (Gen Hussainâs) idea. I told him we could discuss this but he did not agree and went ahead with his plan,â said Nek, who fought pitched battles with the Army in March. Nek said that Gen Hussain had called the registration plan just an idea. âI told him that today you have one idea and the next morning you will have another and therefore made it clear to him that I will not accept a new idea every next day,â Nek said in an aggressive tone. He said that he had suggested the government make a new deal with him if it was not happy with the current one.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/09/2004 8:16:12 PM ||
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The police said on Sunday it had arrested a key suspect in a bombing last week that killed three Chinese engineers in Gwadar. Police arrested Mohammed Usman, 26, in a raid late on Saturday on a house in Gwadar, the Arabian Sea town where a car bomb targeted a bus carrying the Chinese last Monday. âWe believe he is the main suspect,â said Gwadar police chief Malik Yasrab. An investigator said police seized from the house a manual on making bombs and how to detonate them. Yasrab said 18 other people have also been detained so far for questioning. No one has claimed responsibility for the bombing, which police believe was set off by remote control. Nine other Chinese and two Pakistanis were injured. Wazir Khan, another police official in Gwadar, said 250 police reservists and paramilitary troops have been deployed around the Chinese workersâ residential quarters.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/09/2004 8:14:53 PM ||
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This could also have been Paleos hit bottom and dig
EFL Two gunmen killed after opening fire on memorial service for slain Hatuel family
Palestinian gunmen opened fire yesterday on a memorial service being held on the Kissufim road for Tali Hatuel and her four daughters, who were killed last week in a terror attack on same road which connects Gazaâs Gush Katif settlement bloc with the Kissufim crossing... [as Rachel Corrie said, "they are the gentlest, kindest people in the world]
Toward the end of the service, at around 6:45 P.M., terrorists hiding in nearby Palestinian homes opened fire on the mourners from a distance of some 300 meters. Some 30 minutes later, Israel Defense Forces soldiers safely evacuated the settlers in the direction of the Kissufim crossing. Searches of the area revealed the body of one terrorist. The IDF believes a second terrorist was also killed.
From IRAQ the Model Blog - what at least one Iraqi thinks about the prisoner abuse:
Gharib, other parts of the picture.
Yesterday a friend of mine, whoâs also a doctor, visited us. After chatting about old memories, I asked him about his opinions on the current situations in Iraq. Iâve always known this friend to be apathetic when it comes to politics, even if it means whatâs happening in Iraq. It was obvious that he hadnât change and didnât show any interest in going deep into this conversation. However when I asked him about his opinion on GWB response to the prisonersâ abuse issue, I was surprised to see him show anger and disgust as he said:
- This whole thing makes me sick.
- Why is that?! I asked.
- These thugs are treated much better than what they really deserve!
- What are you saying!? You canât possibly think that this didnât happen! And theyâre still human beings, and there could be some innocents among them.
- Of course it happened, and Iâm not talking about all the prisoners nor do I support these actions, and there could be some innocents among them, but I doubt it.
- Then why do you say such a thing?
- Because these events have taken more attention than they should.
- I agree but there should be an investigation on this. There are other pictures that were shown lately, and there are talks about others that will be shown in the near future.
- Yes, but what happened cannot represent more than 1% of the truth.
- Oh I really hope there would be no more than that.
- No, thatâs not what I meant. What Iâm saying is that these events are the exception and not the rule.
- How do you know that!? I must say I agree with your presumption, but I donât have a proof, and I never thought youâd be interested in such issue!
A bomb went off Sunday night at a Baghdad hotel used by foreign contractors, ripping through the bar and wounding six British and Nepalese, a hotel employee said. The bomb struck the Four Seasons Hotel in central Baghdad and tore apart chairs and part of the ceiling in the bar, where the six injured were sitting, the employee said. The bomb was placed outside the hotel, he said. Hotel staff said the six were of British and Nepalese nationality but did not say how many of each. The extent of their injuries was not known. Many Nepalese in Iraq serve as security guards for private companies.
Surprising no journalists were injured in a bar bombing
A 24-year-old U.S. military policeman will be the first soldier to face a court-martial in connection with the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison, the military said Sunday. Spc. Jeremy C. Sivits of Hyndman, Pa., a member of the 372nd Military Police Company, will stand trial in Baghdad on May 19, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said. The proceedings will be open to media coverage. Sivits is believed to have taken some of the photos that triggered the worldwide scandal over America's treatment of Iraqi prisoners. His father, Daniel Sivits, said last month that his son "was told to take a picture and he did what he was told."
Oh, spare me...
He has been charged with conspiracy to maltreat subordinates and detainees, dereliction of duty for negligently failing to protect detainees from abuse and cruelty and maltreatment of detainees, Kimmitt said.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/09/2004 4:04:49 PM ||
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So you don't think these were any sort of regular interrogation procedure either, Fred?
The thing that's bugging me the most is that based on what bits and pieces I'm picking up, the soldiers were completely undisciplined... which helps suggest (among other things) that this wasn't based on any proper procedure, or doctrine, and probably wasn't ordered.
In a strange sort of way, all the excuses I've been reading, from pundits on the right ("it was just some troops blowing off steam!" or "it was an effective interrogation technique, and not that bad!"), the left ("you know these were just the poor grunts who were just following orders"; "what do you expect when you send people off to fight in a fraudulent war" or finally, "it was probably Rumsfeld's mind control powers..."), or the troops in question themselves ("I never heard of... what did you call it? The Geneva Convention?") are all very disturbing.
I keep thinking to myself, just how stupid do these people think we are?
Posted by: Phil Fraering ||
05/09/2004 17:55 Comments ||
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Our clearest view of what happened will come through the court martial process. Unfortunately, there is no alternative but to start at the bottom and go up the chain till someone's defence is they didn't know. Convict that one for incompetence, the rest for whatever is proven and be done with it.
Posted by: Mr. Davis ||
05/09/2004 18:12 Comments ||
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#3
The guy is either sadistic and enjoyed it or a brainless robot and couldn't think better? What will it be?
Let me tell you. You people are so obsessed with your power and your military that you can't see that the world is not yours and think you can do whatever you want with it...
Well, remember that all empires fall... It's all over in history... What makes you different? That you are looking for it...
#4
Anon4776, America doesn't have an empire.
And if you call a handful of lower level soldiers who engage in sexual humiliation and take photos of enemy prisoners an expression of our "obsession with power and military," you're smoking crack.
The United States has yet to open up its full military capability in either Iraq or Afghanistan
In fact, a lot of Americans would have liked to have turned most of the Middle East into a parking lot on 9/11.
But we didn't.
It's called restraint and compassion.
Something very few empirical powers in human history have demonstrated.
Posted by: Jen ||
05/09/2004 18:10 Comments ||
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Anon4776--The true difference between America and any empire in history is that we punish our soldiers for abusing prisoners instead of promoting them. Do you think Saddam not only expected but demanded such behavior from his own soldiers? Caesar? Hitler? Stalin? Napoleon? Ghenghis Khan? Attila? Hirohito? Alexander?
For someone that accuses us of not remembering history, you sure have a loose grasp of it yourself.
Regardless, it's very true that "empires" don't last forever. America's day in the sun may someday come to an end, but it won't be before your lifetime, which suits me just fine. You can sulk all you want until then.
In the meantime, do the little dance we taught you or we'll shut off your foreign aid. Oh, and wear the funny little hat, too! That always cracks me up.
Posted by: Dar ||
05/09/2004 18:23 Comments ||
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#6
Dar, perfect comeback! ThanQ! ROFL
Posted by: Jen ||
05/09/2004 18:31 Comments ||
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Anonymous, you have made at least 3 definite assertions about what we collectively believe.
This is generalization and a presumption of clairvoyant authority.
It seems that you are the one with imperial delusions, the empire of Napoleon to be specific.
Take your meds before you come back or find a different parade ground upon which to address your troops.
#8
BTW, Anon, clairvoyant authoritarianism, telling people not only what they should think but what they DO think, is a clinical symptom of chronic alcohol abuse. Look it up.
#9
I have no problem with this soldier -- and more to come -- being court martialled. The system works, etc. What does bother me is that the procedings are going to be open to the press. That means that the fix is in -- this man has already been found guilty. Sorry, but this man is supposed to have some rights -- even in the military.
Posted by: Infidel Bob ||
05/09/2004 23:40 Comments ||
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#10
IB,
Give me a break. Do you think he would get a more fair trial behind closed doors? Half the country thinks he is being scapegoated to cover up systemic torture emanating from Rumsfeld's force fields. This will be a fair court martial.
Sentencing if guilty? That's another matter.
Posted by: Mr. Davis ||
05/09/2004 23:48 Comments ||
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#11
I agree with you, #9. The investigation, hearing, and punishment should have remained an internal matter within the military. This public court martial is way over the top,IMO, and smacks of "kangaroo court" justice. It clearly means that DC neocon bureaucrats[read Wolfie] and holier than thou politicians[read McCain and Swimmer] are having too much input on how the military deals with allegations of "conduct unbecoming" within its ranks. Furthermore, this public court martial will undermine the authority of the brave and honorable GI's still at war in Iraq.
Posted by: rex ||
05/09/2004 23:57 Comments ||
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Well, the politicians you deplore wouldn't have had to make the court martial public if the defense attorneys of the soldier(s) involved hadn't decided it was such a wonderful idea to leak details of the case (including the pictures) to the press. See this previous Rantburg article for details.
Posted by: Phil Fraering ||
05/10/2004 0:26 Comments ||
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U.S. forces swept through an insurgency-hit province in southeastern Afghanistan, detaining 35 Pakistanis Taliban suspects, a senior Afghan official said Sunday. Hundreds of American soldiers began combing three districts of Zabul province, about 240 miles southeast of the capital, Kabul, on Friday, Gov. Khial Mohammed told The Associated Press. "There was no resistance," Mohammed said. "All the suspected Taliban are in U.S. custody."
"Stick 'em up, Mahmoud!"
"Don't shoot, coppers!"
American troops also found weapons during the raids, which continued Sunday, Mohammed said. No Afghan troops were involved in the raids, he said. Mohammed initially said the operation netted Mullah Rozi Khan, who is believed to command Taliban militants in the province, where the U.S.-backed government of President Hamid Karzai has little control. But later he said, "It is now confirmed that Mullah Rozi Khan was not among the 35 Taliban who were arrested."
That's too bad...
Posted by: Fred ||
05/09/2004 4:02:06 PM ||
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im assume they gave the allged the abu miranda
Posted by: abu aclu ||
05/09/2004 18:18 Comments ||
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The scandal over abuse at Abu Ghraib is bringing out the stories, from people fearing for imprisoned relatives, from former detainees who claim mistreatment — and from possible frauds looking to exploit the uproar. At a press conference by human rights groups in Baghdad on Sunday, numerous former prisoners came forward to tell of abuse including beatings by soldiers and sleep deprivation. The accounts resembled those found by U.S. investigators at the notorious prison.
Fallujah native Abdul-Qader Abdul-Rahman al-Ani, his left elbow wrapped in bandages, his right forearm bound in a cast, recounted how he was beaten by soldiers who picked him up last month. The soldiers tied him and two others arrested with him to a tree and sodomized them one after the other, he told journalists. "I ask President Bush," he said. "Does he agree with this?" As Ani, 47, repeated his story, he was interrupted by Jabber al-Okaili, a member of one of the human rights groups that organized the gathering. "He's lying," al-Okaili shouted. "He's a liar!"
Al-Ani was rushed to an office, where al-Okaili and others unwound the bandage on his left arm and found the elbow unscarred and healthy. They cut off half of the cast on his forearm, even as al-Ani insisted, "By God, it's true, everything I say is true." "All his papers were forged," al-Okaili, of the Free Iraq Institute, said after al-Ani left the building. "Who knows why he did this. Maybe he was paid by former members of Saddam Hussein's regime."
"There are people who try to exploit the situation," said Adel al-Allami, of the Human Rights Organization of Iraq. "We have to be very careful and very precise in our facts. This is a very sensitive issue."
Posted by: Fred ||
05/09/2004 3:59:47 PM ||
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I for one am happy for pictures of abuse. I want to break our enemies will to fight, and if humilation at the hands of women or taking pictures of the "brave jihadis" in womens underwear makes these guys give up names,numbers and locations of their organizations of hate and terror, thats fine with me. I want our enemies to fear us, and fear us deeply. I love the idea that jihadis might think twice before killing americans( or anyone else for that matter, but one thing at a time). The Jihadis all crave death, but apparently being forced to wear 'hanes l'eggs pantyhose' sends them into a tizzy. Does anyone think if these pictures were of Saddam being treated poorly that we would care as much? These people that are being abused here are the modern worlds equivalent to SS stormtroopers, who openly kill, maim and exort from women and children on a daily basis, they dont do it in the name of the rights of man or the independence of iraq, they do it for nothing but money, mostly Iranian money. These are not as some would say, just "kids off the street". We've all seen the pictures of Mussolini hanging upside down in a gas station. Our reaction to those horrible pictures of ritualistic partisan abuse is simple offhanded "good riddance". Where do get off endowing these jihadi bastards with any more humanity than we do to the former ruler of fascist Italy?
He was just a man after all, dont we have respect for the dead?
sorry kids, he gave up his position of being "just a man" when he aided and abetted genocide. As far as respect for the dead goes? "sic semper tyrannus" I say. There is no better deterrent to dictators than that one picture alone.
We are all adults here, we know what goes on in prisons in this country every day. We also know that one of the most effective non invasive methods to break someones spirit is to simply deny them sleep. Anyone remember the Panama invasion? what was that, 30 straight days of US troops playing Van Halen's "Panama" over loudspeakers? Didnt Janet Reno also abuse the families in Waco with similar sleep deprivation techniques? Anyone remember the UK Guardian, or the NY Times getting into a lather over it? page a-13 below the fold, behind the Macys ad, I think.
What do we have here exactly? Do we have pictures of our troops hanging prisoners on piano wire? inserting glass rods into their penises and the breaking them off? dripping acid on them? hardly. No, we had Wimmin mocking "jihadi jonnies" and their fleshy man parts. oh, thats just awful "jihadi johnny", how did you withstand it?....... maybe next time you get a big idea to set up a bomb that kills americans by the roadside, you'll think twice, eh?
What do the french do when they want information from suspected terrrorists? The Germans?, and oh, how 'bout the russians? why I'll bet they all get right on the phone with "jacoby and meyers" to ensure that the rights of the jihadis are ensured while they are fed cheese and crackers with a glass of merlot on a sunny afternoon. More Wine, Sheik Mohammed?
Does anyone remember a single european head of state take responsibility for his countries actions overseas? Ever? Dont even get me started on what middle eastern rulers
will do to people who even have an Israeli stamp in the their passport? any outcry for that? hardly.The silence is deafening, because according to the leftists, we deserve our fate.
Those people that are the most appalled by the prison abuse scandal also spoke openly of Americans as war criminals before these pictures were released. What they are appalled at wasnt the prison abuse, but the fact that people like me havent turned our backs on our Army, our President or our country as a result of the disclosure. Out here in "flyover country", the unwashed populace is not about to indict the entire country because of pictures of prison abuse. Most of us wished far worse things on the likes of Mr. Osama bin laden and Mohammed Atta and even Saddam Hussein for making us interrupt our lives so we can go clean up his giant sized cat box of a country. We know that the guilty in our Army will be punished and that even if the worst of the accusations proves to be true that it doesnt add up to what a single days atrocities add up to in countries like Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, France, Germany, Spain, Kosovo, RUssia.
Let's be clear what going on here. This case of prison abuse is being used as a crowbar on the heads of the American populace. You and your decent human sensibilities are being targeted by the jihadists and their leftist supporters. "SEE THE HORRIBLE CONDITIONS OF THE IRAQI PRISONERS UNDER THE EVIL AMERICANS". Our enemies count on our decency as a weak point. They think they can count on our common decency to save them when they start to lose. "Don't worry Mohammed, if the Americans catch you, it will be the best you've even been treated", they say to each other. Well Sorry Jihadi Jonny, My contract for decency ended with the second aircraft went into the WTC. "You called the tune Jihadi, now you pay the piper", I say. Once upon a time, Americans were faced with another enemy who fought to only to the death and as a result they were forced to abandon their chivalous decent homespun American ways. We began to use the invention of air dropped napalm and handheld flamethrowers to kill en masse members of the Imperial Japanese Army. We then went on to torch their cities, filled with their civilians. We called for Unconditional Surrender from a culture where surrender was unknown. Why? Because in wartime, you do what it takes to end the war, because ending it is the only humane act you can take. And wars only end when your enemies capitulate to your will or you to theirs. All military action is based on that one fact alone, your enemies must say "no more" for their to be any peace. You go as far as you need to ensure that it happens. If putting "Jihad Jonny" in panties moves us one day closer to ending the war, then I'm all for it. But then a again, if crushing his head under a tank tread gets us one step closer to peace and freedom for all mankind, then I'm all for that too. Those of you who think "Bush is a bloodsucker",I got news for you. There are alot of us who wish he would do more. Were easy to find, we usually fly the US flag, even if its not a holiday.
By the way, dear readers, If you dont react to this "prisoner abuse event" in the way the leftists and jihadis wish, you can all get ready to see pictures of women and children killed by American troops, trumpeted on every headline on every newspaper and broadcast from here to election day. I can guarantee you that by the end of this month, We will begin to see "evidence" from the worlds press of American War crimes in Iraq.
The worlds leftists and the Middle eastern Dictatorships cannot afford to let the Iraq experiment work. They will stop at nothing to deny America to be perceived as successful in this endevor. If we are successful, the dictators of the world wil be on the run for a very long time. If we fail, The rise of dictators has only just begun.
However, if you think you were shocked by the abuse pictures, you can bet your ass that the press was just as shocked at the polls that showed that 70% of the people polled didnt want Rumsfeld to resign.
The "war", is not even close to an end, it's just getting started.It's not 1945. its late 1942. Let us all pray for our success in winning this war for as to lose will most certainly mean our eventual enslavement, both the right and the left. And while I remain optimistic as to our chances, I am fully aware that we can lose, but only if we decide to stop fighting.
Posted by: Frank Martin ||
05/09/2004 19:05 Comments ||
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Late '42?!?! I'd say it's late '40. The bad news is 9/11 was the Panay. We haven't seen the Pearl Harbor yet and won't be at war till we do.
Posted by: Mr. Davis ||
05/09/2004 19:24 Comments ||
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EFL
Three Chinese, belonging to the China Harbour Engineering Company (CHEC), were killed when a car laden with explosives hit a van in which they were travelling to the site of a new commercial and naval port under construction by the Chinese company at Gwadar in the Balochistan province of Pakistan on May 3, 2004. Following the incident, President Pervez Musharraf ordered the replacement of all Balochi Policemen posted for the security of the Chinese personnel working and living in Gwadar and other places in Balochistan with men of the Frontier Corps. A special unit of the Frontier Corps has already been inducted into the Gwadar area for the purpose.
The first phase of the $250-million project, which was launched in 2002, is scheduled to be completed by March next year and it is reported that the Chinese have said they might complete the project before the deadline. The Musharraf regime has been attaching considerable importance to the successful completion of this commercial-cum-naval port. Even though it is projected as meant to facilitate the foreign trade of Pakistan, Afghanistan, the Central Asian Republics (CAR) and the Xinjiang Province of China, its real importance in the eyes of the Pakistani military is due to the fact that its successful construction and commissioning would reduce the dependence of Pakistanâs foreign trade on the Karachi port, through which over 70 per cent of its foreign trade presently passes, and provide the Pakistan Navy with a relatively safe rear base, not within easy reach of the Indian Navy and Air Force, from which it could operate against the Indian Navy in the case of another war between the two countries. The Chinese interest in assisting Pakistan in this project is due to their desire to strengthen the capability of the Pakistan Navy against the Indian and to have base facilities for their own naval ships when they visit the Gulf region. Under the agreement for Chinese assistance, the Pakistani military was also reported to have permitted the Chinese military intelligence to set up a listening post at Gwadar to monitor the movement of US naval ships in the Gulf region similar to the listening post which the Myanmarâs military regime has allowed the Chinese to set up on the CoCo Islands. Ever since the construction started, there has been strong opposition to it from large sections of the Balochis as well as the political parties of Balochistan due to the following reasons:
The exclusion of the Balochistan Government from all decisions relating to the project. The entire project is controlled by the Federal Government in Islamabad, with the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) playing an important role in the selection of contractors and companies for participating in the project.
Fearing possible Indian attempts to sabotage the early construction of the project, a large number of Balochis living in the area, who are viewed by the ISI as sympathetic to India, have been removed from there and replaced with Punjabis and other non-Balochis enjoying the confidence of the ISI.
All civil engineering contracts relating to the project have been given to companies based in Lahore and Karachi and they have been encouraged to import non-Balochi labour from outside to work there, thereby belying the expectations of the Balochis that the project would provide them with jobs.
The few Balochis, who have been recruited by the Chinese company, have been accusing it of following exploitative policies by paying them arbitrarily low wages and denying them basic amenities in respect of housing, medical relief etc as compared to the salaries and amenities enjoyed by the Chinese. There have also been complaints of non-payment of wages in time.
Consequently, for over a year now, the Balochi nationalist parties have mounted a strong opposition to the project, which they view as anti-Balochi and meant to serve the interests of the Pakistan military and add to the prosperity of Punjab without any benefits for the Balochis. However, their opposition till now has been in the form of protest meetings, demonstrations and random explosions not causing human lives. While the Pakistani authorities themselves have been pointing the needle of suspicion at Balochi tribes for the explosion, the Chinese officials do not seem to share their suspicion. It is reported by reliable sources that the Chinese officials believe that whatever be the grievances of the Balochis over the project, they would not target the Chinese engineers. Instead, they would target Pakistani civilian and military officers associated with the project. The Chinese suspicion seems to be directed at anti-Beijing Uighur extremist elements who have taken shelter in the tribal areas of Pakistan bordering Afghanistan. In view of the Chinese interest in the Gwadar port as a gateway for the external trade of the Xinjiang province and as a regional base for the Chinese Navy, the Uighur extremists, in Beijingâs perception, would have a strong motive to disrupt its construction. On the basis of the evidence available so far, it is difficult to say anything definitively as to who could have been responsible for the explosion.
Posted by: Paul Moloney ||
05/09/2004 2:24:57 AM ||
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U.S. forces stepped up pressure on Shiite gunmen loyal to radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, pushing with tanks into the holy city of Kufa and assaulting militia positions in the narrow streets of a Shiite enclave in Baghdad. At least 34 Iraqis were killed. The heaviest fighting in Baghdad came when militiamen from al-Sadr's Al-Mahdi Army attacked police stations and set up checkpoints in the Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City, a heavily populated district in the eastern part of the capital, Kimmitt said. U.S. troops moved in and secured two police stations in fighting that killed 18 militiamen, Kimmitt said. Earlier, an explosion tore apart shops in a market in the western Biyaa district. The blast occurred when police tried to dismantle two bombs found in vendors' stalls, witnesses said. Four people were killed and 17 were wounded, the Health Ministry said. Kimmitt said three people were killed. "Is this the freedom that they want â people cut into pieces?," one man at the market, Fadhil Farid, cried. "What did we do wrong?"
Did you adhere to the "No smoking within 500 feet" sign?
At about the same time, gunmen opened fire on a U.S. patrol in western Baghdad, sparking a firefight that killed three Iraqi police, two civilians and one of the attackers, Kimmitt said. Fighters attacked another patrol in the center of the capital, wounding two Iraqi policemen. The U.S. foray into Kufa was the deepest move yet into the city, an al-Mahdi Army stronghold. Several tanks pushed as close as 500 yards from Kufa's main mosque, trading fire with militiamen on both sides of the main road, witnesses said. Tanks also moved into the neighborhood on the other side of Kufa, trading fire with fighters. Two civilians were killed and 10 others â including two children â were wounded in the battles, hospital officials said. Three houses were destroyed. The tanks pulled out of the city in the afternoon. "It was the first time the Americans came this far," said Odai Abdulkarim, 24, a mechanic who has a shop off the highway leading to the Kufa mosque, where al-Sadr regularly leads Friday prayers. "We are afraid for our families, afraid the rockets would hit our house."
"Americans don't hit you if you don't hit them," interjected Haidar Abu Zaid, 35, another mechanic. "The al-Mahdi Army fires from our areas, so they have no choice but to fire at them â and we end up getting hurt."
Which is why they fire on the Merkins from your areas...
Also Sunday, scattered clashes occurred between U.S. and militia forces in the industrial area of Najaf, where al-Sadr sought refuge last month. Plumes of black smoke could be seen rising from the area. Iraqi police and U.S. tanks blocked the main road from Najaf to nearby Kufa, residents said.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/09/2004 3:41:39 PM ||
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#1
I haven't been keeping a running total, but I would guess that the jihadis in general and the Mahdi Army in particular have suffered significantly more casualties in April and May than the Coalition has since the start of hostilities last year. The supply of local volunteers must be dwindling and the enthusiasm for jihad waning in the face of US tanks, snipers, and things that go bang in the night.
#4
How do you propose we should have done that, Mr. Zipperhead?
Impose the SUPER Patriot Act on Iraq?
Interrogate every Iraqi male, penetrate the mosques and take down every al-Sadr Friday "sermon," arrest and interrogate--using female GIS with cigarettes making them form naked pyramids, if necessary--every jihadi-looking suspect?
One of the key things in a democracy is the Rule of Law.
And you can't impose the operation of the Rule of Law without something resembling probable cause.
These "insurgents" had to do something--in this case, literally stage an uprising--before our soldiers had reason to suspect them of being wrongdoers.
Posted by: Jen ||
05/09/2004 17:43 Comments ||
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#5
How about we interview Haidar Abu Zaid, and run radio, TV, and leaflet campaigns with his words of wisdom, along with some suggestions to cooperate with Coalition forces, who will evacuate and protect your family, and compensate you for any damage done? Amazing that a conventional news outlet even reported his comments. I'm all for systematically taking down the brownshirts, but given what seems widespread loathing for them, I say we should make heroic efforts to kiss up to the local populace as we do so. Much of this may be going on, but as we are dependent on a clueless and often hostile media and a hapless official information effort, good luck to us in finding out ....
AT LEAST 32 people were killed and 46 injured in a blast that tore through a stadium today in the capital of separatist Chechnya, Grozny, an official Chechen interior ministry spokesman said. "I can confirm that 32 people were killed and 46 others injured in the stadium," spokesman Ruslan Atsayev said. The injured had been taken to three different hospitals in the Grozny area, he said.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
05/09/2004 10:15:26 AM ||
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A Kassam rocket launched from northern PA-controlled Gaza landed in a western Negev area community this morning. There were no reports of injuries but there were damage reports.
Posted by: Mark Espinola ||
05/09/2004 3:11:39 AM ||
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IDF troops working with border police units early today discovered another weapons smuggling tunnel connecting between the Rafiah area of southern Gaza and Egypt. A number of PA residents were inside the tunnel when soldiers detected it.
Posted by: Mark Espinola ||
05/09/2004 3:08:13 AM ||
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hope they sealed it off with the "miners" inside
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/09/2004 10:39 Comments ||
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Maybe they were trying to escape?
Building a wine cellar?
The first steps in the PLO subway system?
- Things Saint Pancake would say
A land mine explosion in Chechnya has marred Russiaâs celebration of victory over the Nazis in World War Two.An emergency official says the blast at a celebration in the Chechen capital, Grozny caused at least ten injuries.The explosion happened during a ceremony in the Dynamo stadium that was attended by Chechnyaâs Kremlin-backed President Akhmad Kadyrov. An Associated Press reporter at the scene said that numerous people were injured.Russia marks the Allied victory over the Nazis every May ninth with military parades and fireworks.
Posted by: Lux ||
05/09/2004 3:42:02 AM ||
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AP / EFL
A land mine exploded during Victory Day celebrations Sunday in a stadium in the Chechen capital, Grozny, killing Chechen President Akhmad Kadyrov and a senior Russian military commander, Chechnyaâs Interior Ministry said. At least 10 people were killed and up to 100 injured. Kadyrov -- the Moscow-backed leader of the rebel region -- died of wounds 30 minutes after the explosion, and Gol. Gen. Valery Baranov, head of the Joint Army Command of the North Caucasus, died at the scene. The explosion happened underneath a VIP-seating area during a ceremony in the Dynamo stadium that was attended by senior Chechen officials. Russia marks the Allied victory over the Nazis every May 9 with military parades and fireworks around the country.
Posted by: someone ||
05/09/2004 4:39:30 AM ||
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Hot from CNN:
There are conflicting reports as to the fate of Chechen President Akhmad Kadyrov and the top Russian general in Chechnya, Valery Baranov, following a blast that rocked the republicâs capital Grozny. Interfax news agency initially quoted a source in the Russian command as saying Baranov had been killed in the attack on a packed stadium on Sunday morning. But it later quoted an "official source" as saying the general had been seriously injured and was undergoing an operation. Baranov is the most senior commander of Russian troops in the North Caucasus region that includes separatist Chechnya. Sources from the Chechen Interior Ministry reported that Chechen President Akhmad Kadyrov was also killed in the blast. However, Ziad Sabsabi, head of the Chechen administration, told Itar-Tass news agency: "According to my information, Akhmad Kadyrov received injuries of moderate seriousness, but his life is not in danger." The explosion happened just beneath the VIP stand in the stadium in Grozny crowded with people celebrating Victory Day. The Russian Emergencies Ministry said a journalist was killed and 25 people were injured. CNN-International is showing video from the site. Reporters at the site say a land mine was placed under the VIP reviewing stand. It was a long fall. Developing ...
Posted by: Scott ||
05/09/2004 6:08:06 AM ||
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Breaking. Some reports say he was injured
Chechnyaâs pro-Moscow leader and the commander of Russian troops have been killed in a bomb blast, reports say. President Akhmad Kadyrov and Gen Valery Baranov were in the Dynamo stadium in the capital, Grozny, at a ceremony marking victory in World War II. A spokesman for Russiaâs emergency situations ministry said a landmine had exploded in a VIP seating area. The explosion killed and injured an unknown number of other people, Russian media reported. Russian television showed chaotic scenes at the stadium as emergency services treated the victims. The emergency ministry spokesman said a second landmine had been found following the evacuation of the stadium. Police and hospital officials quoted by the AFP news agency said at least eight people had been killed and 32 injured. However, the Russian news agency Interfax put the number of casualties at one dead and 25 injured.
Posted by: Paul Moloney ||
05/09/2004 4:57:11 AM ||
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good security, huh?
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/09/2004 9:40 Comments ||
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I heard a report that the security sweep missed the mine because it was hidden within a concrete slab during a stadium rehab a few months ago. Could be an CYA excuse, of course, but long term planning like that isn't good. Let's hope they wipe out the snake pit, not just disperse it.
A member of the IDFâs âOketzâ (Stinger) unit of K-9 bomb-smelling dogs, Tuska, was also killed in Fridayâs Hizbullah attack in the Har Dov region of the northern border. The unitâs medic received telephone instructions as efforts in the field continued to stabilize Tuska, who was eventually transported to the clinic of Dr. Gil Shavit. Shavit instructed the medic in the field in controlling the bleeding and stabilizing the dogâs until he could be transported. Upon arriving at his clinic a number of hours later, Shavit immediately realized the dog sustained serious abdominal and head injuries and was covered with shrapnel. Efforts to resuscitator him failed and Tuska will be laid to rest today alongside 17 other dogs, all members of the Oketz unit that were killed in the line of duty.
Posted by: Mark Espinola ||
05/09/2004 3:10:09 AM ||
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I'm sure the team is in deed in mourning. Dogs are incredible animals ... more complex socially than even the great apes in some ways ... with senses we can barely guess at.
But then I'm biased as I share my life with half a dozen of them, have stayed up all night as puppies whelped, and wonder each time one of my spaniels scents a bird hidden 100 feet away or a Whippet overtakes a rabbit with a 50 yard head start ....
They aren't humans, and we do them no favors when we treat them as if they are. But there are real personalities inside those furry bodies. Wouldn't give mine up for anything.
#6
Right. And the Muslims hate all dogs because they are supposedly unclean. Saddam was noted for torturing and viciously killing dogs. One more strike against the RoP.
Posted by: mac ||
05/09/2004 22:58 Comments ||
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Saddahm tortures dogs.
GWB has a Scottish Terrier sidekick.
What does that say?
We ought to let some of those Baghdad dogs munch on some of the Head-bowlers.
{woof}
Two foreign nationals, one of them Swiss, have been stoned to death in the Afghan capital, government officials said Sunday. Bodies of the men were discovered in Baghe Chilstone, an ancient garden not far from the cityâs center, Interior Ministry spokesman Lufullah Mashal, told Reuters. "Locals informed the police and showed them the bodies and an investigation is going on as to who stoned these to death, and why," Mashal said. "One of them holds a Swiss passport and the nationality of the other is not known." Both had come from neighboring Pakistan nine days ago, said Khalil Aminzada, deputy chief of Kabul police. He said the two were wearing local shalwar (baggy trousers) and long shirts as well as woolen hats. The two were pelted last night with bricks and stones and their bodies were being examined by local forensic experts.
"So, what do you think, Dr. Mahmoud?"
"Well, Dr. Quincy, judging from the size and variety of wounds, the broken bones, the internal injuries, and the large pile of bricks found around them, I think they were stoned to death."
A local official at the Swiss embassy in Kabul said Swiss diplomats were informed about the deaths and were in the process of finding more details from the authorities. There was no immediate comment from the officials on the cause of the killing. Stoning to death is a punishment proposed by Islam for adulterers. The practice was publicly administered by the ousted Taliban who ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001 when the U.S.-led military overthrew the radical regime.
Obviously there are details still to come out on this story...
Posted by: TS(vice girl) ||
05/09/2004 9:08:14 AM ||
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Posted by: Man Bites Dog TROLL ||
05/09/2004 10:41 Comments ||
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Who is doing the stoning? The animals who benefited from Bush-Powell's forced status quo armistice arrangements with Talibanis. Those Saudi puppets ensured permanent belligerence.
Hmmm...troll your minds back to the time when Bush-Powell were trying to suppress the Northern Alliance attack on Kabul. Strategic genius?
Posted by: Man Bites Dog TROLL ||
05/09/2004 10:41 Comments ||
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THE Kremlin-backed president of Russiaâs warring Chechnya region and a top Russian general were killed today when an explosion tore through a stadium in the Chechen capital where they were attending Victory Day observances, the republicâs Interior Ministry said. President Akhmad Kadyrov died about 30 minutes after the blast, likely caused by a land mine planted under the stadiumâs VIP seats, a ministry official said. Col.-Gen. Valery Baranov, a top regional commander died at the scene, the official said. In all, at least 10 people were killed and up to 100 injured, the official said.
Corpse count's at 32 as I edit this...
The blast underlined the intense security problems even as the Kremlin says normalcy is being restored after nearly five years of fighting against separatist rebels. Russian soldiers are reported killed in near-daily small attacks by rebels and by rebel-set explosions. Grozny, the war-ruined Chechen capital, has a huge presence of Russian forces, but they have not been able to purge insurgents from the city. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blast, but suspicion inevitably fell on the rebels.
I doubt it was a jealous husband...
"Justice will take the upper hand and retribution is inevitable," Russian President Vladimir Putin said at the conclusion of Moscowâs Victory Day parade on Red Square, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported. Russiaâs NTV television broadcast footage of the stadiumâs VIP section collapsing into a jagged hole of torn wooden planks, sending up a plume of brown smoke. Panicked people dressed in their Sunday best clambered over the seating bleachers. One man was shown carrying a bloodied child, while men in uniform dragged a man covered in blood away from the broken seating area. Shots rang out into the air. Sergei Kozhemyaka, a duty officer at the Emergency Situations Ministry in southern Russia, said the stadium was quickly evacuated. Kozhemyaka said that a second land mine was found near the VIP seats. Russiaâs Echo of Moscow radio reported that numerous people were detained. Russia marks the Allied victory over the Nazis every May 9 with military parades and fireworks around the country. In 2002, a bomb exploded during a Victory Day military parade in the Caspian Sea port of Kaspiisk, killing 43 people, including 12 children.
In the past week or two there've been more stories indicating Kadyrov might be successful in enticing Makhadov to hang it up. That'd take the thin cloak of legitimacy from the Bad Guys, and Basayev's been trying to make it not happen. Looks like he succeeded today.
Posted by: tipper ||
05/09/2004 8:12:25 AM ||
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wow wonder what the response from putin will be, bet hes going mad.This boom may well a 'trigger' that unleashes the big red bear much like september eleventh did for America, surly the russian public will get behind putin too and with the press being the way it is out there whos gonna protest and kick up a fuss about him unleashing thier military. Scary times too come i fear, and kinda hope.
Posted by: Shep UK ||
05/09/2004 8:32 Comments ||
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Russia has already killed a quarter million Chechens, I fail to see how much more the big red bear could possibly awaken, or how much more the Russian military can get "unleashed" -- it's as unleashed as you can get, short of nukes.
#4
Aris - I think a quarter million is nothing compared to what a modern military unleashed, without rules, could do. Our marines could've leveled Fallujah and the 300,000 in it within a couple days
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/09/2004 9:14 Comments ||
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Frank> Well okay, perhaps. But since the whole of the Chechen nation was about a single million, I believe, the only thing remaining for the Russians to do is a sort of "final solution" where every single Chechen will be killed. My point remains that the Russians have hardly been restrained so far.
#7
250K plus the 1000 Saudi princes helping to finance the Chechen war? heh heh
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/09/2004 9:40 Comments ||
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I suppose Russia will try to turn Chechnya into one big concentration camp, flooding the country with more soldiers in order to more strictly control people's movements.
Russia's other major alternative would be to give up and withdraw, but I doubt that'll happen.
If Russia does bring in more and more forces, then the Chechens can kiss goodbye their dreams of a Chechnya free of foreign domination, a Chechnya for Chechens. Many of the Russians militarily based in Chechnya will settle and stay there, will have and raise their children there, will establish businesses and organizations there. This is what happened in the past, and it will happen again.
The Chechens did have a great historical opportunity for a free Chechnya after the Soviet Union fell apart. Instead of working peacefully and politically to fulfill that opportunity, they allowed their nation's gangsters and Moslem fanatics to wreck their future.
Posted by: Mike Sylwester ||
05/09/2004 9:45 Comments ||
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their nation's gangsters and Moslem fanatics to wreck their future
Mike - that applies to other Moslem nations as well.
Gee, I think I see a pattern.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
05/09/2004 11:33 Comments ||
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Russia is equally to blaim for the fact Chechnya turned out to be a hotbed for thugs & criminals , afther Chasavyurt agreement..They didn't live up to their promises and were heavily involved in the whole abduction businness, in order to keep the country unstable..Or does anyone here really believe they intended to give up Chechnya after their 1996 defeat.. ?
Rebel attacks killed four Russian soldiers and one policeman in Chechnya over the last 24 hours, an official in the Moscow-backed Chechen administration said Saturday. Rebels fired on Russian positions 15 times in the past day, killing three soldiers and wounding six, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Soldiers clashed with rebels outside Yandi village in the Achkhoi-Martan district. One soldier was killed. Two rebels also died, and a third was wounded, the Chechen official said. Another clash outside the Dubai-Yurt village left four soldiers wounded. Two rebels were killed, the official said. In the Urus-Martan district, a gunmen opened fire on a Chechen policeman, wounding him. Another Chechen policeman died in an attack outside Novy Sharoi village in the Achkhoi-Martan district. Russian troops rounded up 160 people over the last 24 hours in security sweeps aimed at flushing out rebels hiding among the civilian population.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
05/09/2004 2:24:50 AM ||
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Horrifying new details of how Daniel Pearl, the murdered Wall Street Journal reporter, met his death have emerged from the interrogation of new suspects by Pakistani police. Pearl knew for several hours that he was about to be killed, but resisted repeated attempts to sedate him, police now believe. He was fully aware of what was happening when the Arab extremists who took control during his final days cut his throat, according to information gleaned from Pakistani militants now in police custody. The camera operator made a mistake and missed the moment of his death, which his murderers then re-enacted, before decapitating the reporter.
Inept rat bastards can't even commit an atrocity right, no matter how much they practice...
The revelations have fuelled anger among police investigators that at least a dozen leading suspects in the kidnap and murder of the 38-year-old journalist have been arrested, but have not been charged or tried in connection with his death. Some have been accused of unrelated - and mostly lesser - offences. The three most recently captured suspects have not yet been charged, and their arrests have never been officially announced. A legal official said: "No matter what Sheikh is guilty of, if the police were forced to change their account of what happened because of newfound evidence, he might be given the benefit of the doubt on everything else, and be set free immediately." Contrary to evidence given during Omar Sheikh's trial, police now believe he may not have been present when Pearl met Sajid Jabbar, the go-between, at a Karachi restaurant. It was after the meeting that Pearl disappeared. Investigators say that senior officials in the Sindh police - the force responsible for Karachi - are "petrified" that if militants arrested in the past year were tried for their part in Pearl's murder, their earlier case against Omar Sheikh might unravel in the courts. One official close to the investigation said: "Even if these men have admitted their roles in the kidnapping and killing of Daniel Pearl, we simply cannot charge them because of its impact on that earlier case."
So hang him now, and then try him...
Police have pieced together new details of how Pearl was held in captivity for two weeks, and eventually killed, from those involved - including two who witnessed his final hours. Many of the details were unknown even to Mariane Pearl, the reporter's widow, who wrote a moving memoir about his death, A Mighty Heart. They now believe that Pearl was not forcibly abducted from the restaurant, but at first went willingly with Sajid in his car, while four other militants followed. He was driven to the house on the outskirts of Karachi where he was to be held and killed. There, four others who would guard Pearl dragged him inside at gun-point, tying his hands and blindfolding him. "Even at this point, Pearl didn't realise that he was already in trouble, and kept asking why they were behaving like this," one of those in custody told police. He was held for two weeks before he was killed but made at least one escape attempt - according to the arrested men, just three days before he was murdered. "He tried to scale the wall but couldn't do it because both his hands were tied," one told police. His captors said that Pearl had difficulty sleeping. They brought him English-language newspapers and magazines to help him pass the time and let him exercise inside the room. His efforts to converse with his captors were limited since they could speak only broken English. However, one said: "He made clear that he was a Jew and his wife a Buddhist. He used to imitate the way she prayed, and sing hymns and songs whenever he thought about her." Eventually, Saud Memon, who is believed to be al-Qaeda's chief financier in Pakistan and owned the house where Pearl was held, contacted a group of Arab extremists who took over custody and decided he would be killed. Armed with a video camera, three Arabs arrived, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, third-in-command of al-Qaeda - since handed over to the Americans. For the first time, police have now identified the others as Abdul Rahman and Nasrullah - both Kuwaiti nationals fluent in Arabic, Balochi and Persian. Authorities are still searching for them.
If they're in South Waziristan, all they have to do is turn themselves in and they're home free, right?
On the day Pearl died, two of his Pakistani guards were present: Ali Khan, arrested just two weeks ago, and Fazal Karim, an employee of Saud Memon. One recently told interrogators how the Arabs tried to sedate Pearl, first by injection, then by doctoring his tea. "I think he understood that he was going to be killed and refused to accept tea or to gulp pills. He even did not allow himself to be injected." One of those present told police: "When they were slaughtering him in front of me I thought it was a bad dream. I had seen the cutting of a goat or chicken many times, but had never seen a human being slaughtered in front me."
Didn't do anything to stop it, though, did you?
Karim is among those who have been arrested and jailed for other crimes: narcotics smuggling, in his case. Investigators fear that Khan will also escape prosecution for his part in Pearl's capture and death. Five others who took part in Pearl's capture or guarded him are behind bars for their part in unrelated sectarian killings, and Pakistani authorities have no plans to press charges related to Pearl. Authorities have yet to reveal publicly that they are holding three of the suspects: Khan, Naeem Bokhari and Faisal Bhatti. Last night members of Pearl's family said they wanted all those involved in the journalist's death brought to book, and urged Pakistani authorities to hasten the hearing of Omar Sheikh's appeal.
They want to get him hung, too...
In a statement to The Sunday Telegraph, Mariane Pearl and her parents-in-law, Ruth and Judea Pearl, said: "We are eager to see justice served and the truth come out. We are especially waiting to see a just conclusion of Omar Saeed Sheikh's conviction and the apprehension of all those involved."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
05/09/2004 2:12:15 AM ||
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"While Dan Rather attempts to rationalize the network's heartless decision to air this despicable 'terrorist propaganda video,' it is beyond our comprehension that any mother, wife, father or sister should have to relive this horrific tragedy and watch their loved one being repeatedly terrorized," the family said.
"Terrorists have made this video confident that the American media would broadcast it and thereby serve their exact purpose. By showing this video, CBS or any other broadcaster willing to show it proves that they fall without shame into the terrorists' plan."
-- Mariane Pearl, May 15, 2002
#3
Yeah Ship, you must. I think Wretchard is right. We'll be increasingly challenged to maintain our humanity before this is over. The other side never had any. Unless you consider, in this case, an attempt at sedation as a flickering sign. Something tells me the real agenda, however, was to make Pearl more pliable for their snuff flick.
... American forces in Iraq cannot be defeated in standard military engagements. However, insurgents know the weak spot; the long main supply routes. If camps run short of ammo and spare parts, they must retreat toward Kuwait and hope that the Army's cash strapped logistics bureaucracy can meet the surging demand to save them from catastrophe. The Army must take five steps to prevent an embarrassing retreat: 1) Secure the main supply routes and establish emergency supply caches inside Iraq; 2) Develop plans to quickly abandon vulnerable camps in a crisis; 3) Avoid alienating the Arab world with offensive operations until the first two steps are accomplished; 4) Stop calling Iraqi insurgents thugs, terrorists, and criminals. That encourages poor treatment of all Iraqis by American soldiers and makes negotiations to end violence impossible; 5) Americans must not destroy Iraqi cities in order to save them, lest they find themselves overrun by irate Muslim laundrymen.
#2
some (Dems, leftists and socialists - i.e.: "progessives" LOL) will use any reason to raise taxes - they believe as long as you have a dollar in your pocket to spend freely (like a half-gallon of gas in your cursed SUV), you're not paying enuf
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/09/2004 9:26 Comments ||
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The guy claims to be former Marine. So was Lee Havey Oswald.
By now they probably have this story on a macro key...
Pakistan extended a deadline to Monday for suspected al-Qaeda fugitives hiding in a lawless tribal region near Afghanistan to accept an amnesty offer or face possible military action, an official said Saturday. The government originally gave foreign militants in the South Waziristan tribal region until Friday to turn themselves in, but none came forward. After talks Saturday with local tribal leaders, Asmatullah Gandapur, the region's top administrator, said the deadline has been extended to give more time to resolve differences over how foreigners should register with the government. He did not elaborate.
They're still discussing the shape of the table...
The latest extension came despite a claim Saturday by Brig. Mahmood Shah, chief of security for tribal regions in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province, that the government would not do so. An intelligence official in Islamabad said foreign militants â contacted through local tribal intermediaries and lawmakers â were reluctant to give details about themselves to authorities. âThe foreigners do not want to be photographed. They do not want to give any details to Pakistan because they fear that such things might land in the hands of Americans,â the official said. Mr. Shah reiterated that Pakistan would not turn the foreigners over to other countries if they accept the amnesty offer despite calls from the United States to kill or capture the al-Qaeda fighters still at large. He said if they did not take the amnesty, the government âwill use all options, and that includes the use of force.â
That may come several months from now, when they've all had a chance to get out of the country. Results will be nil.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
05/09/2004 1:58:58 AM ||
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#1
I'm thinking start thinking about the big, big picture... 30-50 years out. My vision has everything from Syria to the Indian border being made into one large bazzar or flea market. The population has a natural talent for this.
#6
Zogster, you cretin.
Our "getting into bed" with Pakistan after 9/11 was absolutely CRUCIAL.
Given their proximity to Afghanistan logistically, the support of their ISI in the past for the Taliban and then the later-revealed selling of nuke secrets by Dr. A.Q. Khan, it was far better to work with them and have Musharraf's cooperation to work with us than the opposite.
Posted by: Jen ||
05/09/2004 17:37 Comments ||
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#7
Jen,
Nobody had to declare them a "Major Non-NATO Ally". But brilliant Colin did. These guys are vying to replace Saudi Arabia and largest undeclared enemy of the U. S.
With the growing economy in India, automobile ownership is sure to rise. We should provide them all the parking space they need in Pakistan.
Posted by: Mr. Davis ||
05/09/2004 17:44 Comments ||
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#8
Mr. D, I think we do a very careful diplomatic walk with both India and Pakistan, but I still maintain that there are far more reasons for us try and work with Musharraf, than against him and Pakistan.
It's borne a lot of fruit for the US and the free world so far, let's see how it goes.
(They gave up A.Q. Khan and pointed us in some "helpful" directions as to where and to whom he sold those nukes.
And Pakistan and India went back to the negotiating table over Kashmir which they hadn't done in 2 years.
And Musharraf agreed to give up on a referendum over Kashmir--A very big deal for him.
And he's letting our boys hunt for OBL and AQ in the wilder parts of his country.
And he's trying to reform his country to be more modern and democratic and less shari'a-bound and tribal and jihadi-inclined.)
Posted by: Jen ||
05/09/2004 17:51 Comments ||
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#9
harpos always strike a dusk
Posted by: fury one ||
05/09/2004 18:19 Comments ||
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US planes dropped leaflets on the southern city of Najaf on Saturday night urging people to choose "a democratic and peaceful Iraq" in a move aimed at further isolating renegade cleric Moqtada Sadr. "You can choose the way that leads to a new Iraq: A peaceful and democratic Iraq and an Iraq full of political freedoms and economic opportunities" said the Arabic-language leaflets. Iraqis were urged to put aside their ethnic and religious differences because doing so would lead them to a "brilliant future brimming with hope." The leaflet is signed "congratulations for a new Iraq and long live Iraq." The back of the leaflet reminded Iraqis that coalition troops will remain in Iraq to "work alongside Iraqi police and military forces to fight terrorists and to protect Iraqis and their families" after the handover of sovereignty to an interim government on June 30. Sadr has been hiding holed up in Najaf for more than a month as the US-led coalition insists he must face justice in the connection with the murder of a rival cleric in 2003 and disband his Mehdi Army militia. I wonder if he an Arafat chat on the phone from time to time comparing stories of life in capitvity and how things might change in Abu Ghraib. May they both find out.
US troops launched a fierce offensive against Sadrâs militia Thursday in Najaf and nearby Kufa, killing 41 fighters, according to the US military, and more have been killed since then. At least four civilians have also been killed, according to hospital sources in both cities.
Posted by: Mr. Davis ||
05/09/2004 1:03:06 AM ||
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Headline was US leaflets Najaf. Sorry.
Posted by: Mr. Davis ||
05/09/2004 1:05 Comments ||
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I'm thinking we need coupons on the back of these leaflets.
United States troops have arrested a top lieutenant to Shiite rebel cleric Sheik Moqtada al-Sadr in Baghdad, according to a member of the radical fundamentalistâs movement. Sayed Amer al-Husseini, the head of Sadrâs office in his stronghold of Sadr City, was detained when 20 US military vehicles drove up to Sadrâs office and sealed off the area, said Sayed Kamal who works in the movementâs Baghdad branch. Helicopters buzzed overhead as coalition soldiers surrounded the offices and traded fire with Sadrâs Mehdi Army militia. The troops raided his office in Baghdad and arrested Husseini and four others after a gun battle in which a Sadr supporter was killed and one wounded. Sadr is bunkered down in the shrine city of Najaf as his supporters battle with the coalition in Naja, Kufa, Diwaniyah and Karbala among other places. The cat puts some teeth in the mouse.
Posted by: Mr. Davis ||
05/09/2004 12:51:54 AM ||
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#1
Bag em & tag em! :)
Posted by: Mark Espinola ||
05/09/2004 0:57 Comments ||
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Call me silly, but the more an everyday Iraqi sees these morons go on their little rampage is just another small wedge in jihad. Think about it, a free muslim....?
A 2005 target for a Palestinian state was unrealistic but the United States was committed to a road map for peace backed by the international community, President George W. Bush said in an interview published yesterday. Bushâs comments in an Egyptian newspaper interview riled Palestinian leaders, who said the 2005 deadline was realistic if talks with Israel were accelerated.
"We declare a Day of Seething!â¢"
How the hell is it "realistic," when all the Paleos have done is boom people? They haven't done a single thing that was required of them...
Bush told the Al-Ahram daily: âI readily concede the date has slipped some. I think the timetable of 2005 is not as realistic as it was two years ago. Nevertheless, I do think we ought to push hard as fast as possible to get a state in place.â Bush told the daily that it âmay be hardâ to achieve the 2005 target due to Israeli-Palestinian violence and the collapse of Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbasâ reformist government last year. But he added the United States was committed to the road map and he would make this clear in a letter to Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qorei who replaced Abbas late last year. The road map charts reciprocal steps toward the establishment of a viable Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 2005, including demands the Palestinians halt violence and Israel freeze settlement construction. But the peace plan ground into deadlock shortly after it was adopted last year due to persistent violence and noncompliance on both sides.
Did he just blame BOTH sides? That twitched the surprise meter.
This is from Arab News. I'm surprised they blamed both sides. Usually it's all the Zionists' fault for... ummm... getting their buses boomed.
Rejecting Bushâs view, Palestinian President Yasser Arafat said the creation of a dictatorial fiefdom state by 2005 was âmore than realisticâ, while Qorei called for stepped up peace negotiations with Israel to meet next yearâs deadline. âLosing time does not serve the peace process nor the stability of this region. Therefore we think 2005 leaves adequate time for serious negotiations (for a state),â Qorei told reporters in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
Sure, Qorei, step up and deliver.
Posted by: Steve White ||
05/09/2004 12:20:23 AM ||
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Even the Palestinians think that perhaps theyâve overdone the AK-47 thing.
In April 2004 the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group, directed by human rights activist Basem Eid, published a report on "The Intraâfada," or "The Chaos of The Weapons," as the Palestinians call the situation prevailing in the Palestinian Authority areas. The report describes the proliferation of firearms possession among the Palestinian public during the current Al-Aqsa Intifada, and its ramifications for Palestinian society and for the internal political situation in the PA areas
Posted by: RWV ||
05/09/2004 12:27:38 AM ||
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An armed man is a free man. No wonder the non-insane Palestenian populace has guns.
"90% of gangland lawlessness is perpetrated by people on the PA payroll."
The report quotes a PA official as saying that 90% of gangland lawlessness is perpetrated by people on the PA payroll
Of course it is. Interesting that the lawless, murderous PA is the darling of the anti-gun Euros.
The word "projection" comes to mind.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
05/09/2004 1:20 Comments ||
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The word "projection" comes to mind.
I agree, Barbara. The rise of anti-Semetism in Europe must eventually be seen as a reflection of continued government sponsorship for terrorist entities like the Palestinian Authority. Their inablilty or outright refusal to recognize this will inevitably drive even more severe American unilateralism as we seek to defend ourselves against those supporters of terorrism that Europe continues turning a blind eye towards.
However much I cannot bring myself to wish a 9-11 style atrocity upon continental Europe, if and when one does happen it will be accompanied by a grim smugness that I will nearly detest myself for.
One U.S. Marine was killed and another injured in an overnight attack on a patrol in southern Afghanistan, the military said Saturday, in the Marines' first loss to hostile fire in Afghanistan. The Marines were fired on by militants south of Tirin Kot, in Uruzgan province, said military spokesman Lt. Col. Tucker Mansager. Spokeswoman Capt. Cindy Beam said the Marines were attacked during a patrol through Uruzgan and Kandahar provinces. She gave no further details of the clash, but said the injured Marine underwent surgery at the U.S. military base near Kandahar city for "multiple gunshot wounds to the lower extremities." She did not give further details about the soldier's condition, and neither victim was identified.
A 2,000-strong Marine force was recently deployed in Uruzgan to bolster the fight against resurgent Pakistani Taliban-led militants. It was unclear if the two were part of that force. Marines are also operating in eastern Kunar province and guard facilities including the U.S. Embassy in Kabul. The troops from the special operations-capable 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit, based in Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, began arriving in Afghanistan in late March and have set up a new base near Tirin Kot. Mansager said the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan had swelled to 20,000 - up from about 11,000 late last year. Part of the increase was down to "overlap" during a routine rotation of units, he said, but declined to say how many would remain once the switch is complete.
Deepest sympathies to the family and comrades of our fallen Marine.
Posted by: Steve White ||
05/09/2004 12:09:27 AM ||
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Expands on yesterday's post...
One person was killed when angry Shia Muslims went on the rampage in Pakistanâs southern city of Karachi, one day after a bomber blew himself up killing 15 Shia worshippers and wounding more than 125. Police said clashes broke out on Saturday after Shia youth tried to force shopkeepers in the central district of sprawling city to close down their businesses. "One person was killed and two others were wounded," a police official said on the condition of anonymity. He said he had no other details.
"I can say no more!"
Fayyaz Qureshi, a senior police official, said more than two dozen protesters were detained for throwing stones at vehicles and shops. Earlier, police used batons and tear gas to disperse angry mourners outside the main Shia mosque in the volatile port city. "Stop killing baby ducks innocent Shia!" shouted a crowd of about 200 mourners during a funeral procession for one of the victims killed when a powerful bomb was detonated during Friday prayers in a mosque in Karachiâs business district. Some of the protesters suffered minor injuries in scuffles with police, who struggled to control the crowds. Grieving relatives of at least a dozen victims buried their dead as authorities deployed paramilitary troops at Shia religious sites in the volatile port city of 14 million people. Additional police were deployed in the city amid fears of further violence.
Pakistan has seen a wave of sectarian attacks in the last year in which more than 125 people have been killed, most of them Shia. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, but it bore the hallmarks of a sectarian attack carried out by a small group of Sunni extremists. Fayyaz Leghari, the cityâs police chief of investigations, said police suspected one of two mutilated bodies found could be that of the bomber. They later released a sketch of the suspect and announced a 2.5 million rupee ($43,410) reward for information about the bomber. The motive for the attack was still unknown. "We are working on three or four leads at the same time, including the involvement of militant groups," he said.
"Legume! Round up the usual suspects!"
However, he said it was premature to say whether the most violent Sunni sectarian group, Lashkar-i-Jhangvi, was behind the attack.
"No, no! Certainly not!"
Ajmal Magsi, chief of cityâs bomb disposal department, said the bomber may have used plastic explosives. "The bomb weighed over two kg and the suicide bomber was hiding explosives beneath his clothes".
Posted by: Mark Espinola ||
05/09/2004 12:00:00 AM ||
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#1
And just how large was the protest on the part of the Shia (much less the Sunni) last year when the church was attacked. Oh thats right, they were just infedels
#3
"We are working on three or four leads at the same time, including the involvement of militant groups," he said.
The whole bloody (figurative and literal) country is a bunch of mutant militant groups. Three or four leads at a time will take 3 or 4 million years to solve the crime. Now we are back to geologic epochs.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
05/09/2004 16:09 Comments ||
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(Aljazeera.net reporters wrote this. You know those champs of the jihadic mindset :)
Al-Sadr supporters have taken to the streets of Basra. (What else is new?)
At least two Iraqis have been killed and one British soldier wounded in clashes between occupation troops and supporters of Shia leader Moqtada al-Sadr, in the southern Iraqi city of Basra. Hundreds of Mahdi Army members armed with assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades took over several areas of Iraqâs second-biggest city and set up checkpoints on the streets. Bursts of gunfire and explosions echoed through the city. The British military reported some exchanges of fire between soldiers and gunmen. Witnesses said fighters were firing at British patrols and positions in several quarters of Basra. Some streets were largely deserted and many shops closed. A British spokesman said he was aware of "disturbances" in Basra. Large crowds, including armed men, had gathered in the city centre near the headquarters of the South Oil Company, he said. Another spokesman later said the situation was unclear, but British forces were avoiding aggravating the situation. Talks were under way with local leaders to ease the tension.
An expanded Governing Council should appoint and oversee the work of a caretaker government due to take over from the U.S.-led occupation June 30, the U.S.-picked body said Saturday.
Wotta surprise.
The statement by the council was the clearest sign yet of significant differences between the Iraqi administration and U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi over the best way to establish a transitional government to take power June 30 until elections the following January. Brahimi, who arrived Thursday to help set up the new government, had proposed an administration with limited powers and made up of Iraqis without ties to established parties. Brhaimi's plan would eliminate key members of the 25-member council.
Like the Kurds...
Several council members have privately said that the body was divided over the best way forward, pointing out that those who wished to see the council still in existence beyond June 30 represented one of several factions. Last month, Brahimi proposed dissolving the council and naming a caretaker government of "men and women known for their honesty, integrity and competence" to serve from June 30, when limited sovereignty will be restored to Iraqis, until a general election held by Jan. 31. He also suggested a prime minister, a president and two vice presidents be appointed. He suggested that the incoming government should have limited a mandate since it will only be in office for up to seven months.
Much like what the IGC was supposed to be, in fact...
Brahimi also gave the impression that a proportionate representation of major political parties in the government was not a high priority, but several Governing Council members have made clear that they don't want a weak government. "The council believes that any future government must enjoy wide popular support so it can run the nation's affairs at this crucial stage of its history," said the council statement in a thinly veiled reference to the need for representation of political parties. "It must also be efficient, honest and has political capability." Since declaring his proposals last month, Brahimi has been accused in Iraq of favoring the country's Sunni Arab minority - he is a Sunni himself - and of being too close to Washington.
That'd be a hard charge to make stick.
Politicians from Iraq's Shiite majority, like Governing Council member Ahmad Chalabi, have led criticism of Brahimi's ideas.
Too close to Washington???
Others have stressed that his role was consultative and his proposals nonbinding. "There is wide opposition to the Brahimi plan in Iraq," Chalabi's spokesman Entifadh Qanbar told reporters in New York on Friday. "The whole idea of having the U.N. or any foreign entity to appoint or lead a political process in Iraq is not acceptable," said Qanbar, He labeled Brahimi an "Arab nationalist" who once supported ousted dictator Saddam Hussein.
Which is a pretty accurate charge...
Some of this criticism is believed motivated by fears that the political careers of council members like Chalabi will end with the demise of the council. The council is widely unpopular as too closely associated with the occupation and because many of its members have no popular support to speak of.
We could always hold an election.
Posted by: Steve White ||
05/09/2004 12:00:00 AM ||
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Let the current GC stay on, as a senate of sorts, and then start to build the house. An executive in an Arab country without goon squads, I dunno.
After the house is built then a new senate. Let the new senate and house provide for an executive, whatever that may be.
Posted by: Lucky Henry ||
05/09/2004 1:17 Comments ||
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It sounds more and more like trying to herd cats as per regards the GC and Brahimi and whatever connections they have with the state dept/washington. Personally I say dump em all, and let the military do a standard occupation for awhile, at least that way we don't have to pussyfoot around with the media regarding how we're not really occupying the country, but really occupying the country, or how we have to listen to islamic sensitivies about every single friggin detail. Lets stop being the nice guys, nice and docile doesn't win wars, being more ruthless than the other guy does.
P.S. Yes I'm fed up with the media, the UN and the state dept in general and most politicians for that matter. :P
#4
I think that "someone" has hit the nail on the head. Brahimi wants to put his sunni "arab brothers" in charge so they can cozy up to the UN to shut down all this "freedom nonsense" and bury the "Oil for Food" files. The real question is why we and the Kurds put up with him.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
