Federal prosecutors have linked Ahmed Abu-Alithe northern Virginia man accused of plotting to assassinate President Bushwith a top Al Qaeda leader who allegedly engineered a major terror bombing in Saudi Arabia under orders from Osama bin Laden, NEWSWEEK has learned. The alleged connection between Abu-Ali and Ali Abd al Rahman al Faqasi al Ghamdi, believed to be an architect of the May 12, 2003, Riyadh bombingin which 35 people were killed, including nine Americanshas yet to be publicly acknowledged by the Justice Department. But sources close to the case tell NEWSWEEK that al Ghamdi, also known as Abu Bakr al-Azdi, is the mysterious figure identified by an FBI agent Tuesday and in a federal indictment last week as "co-conspirator No. 4"an Al Qaeda figure who allegedly plotted with Abu-Ali to mount terror attacks against the United States.
The link to al Ghamdi, who once served with bin Laden in Afghanistan and is believed to have directed one of the principal Al Qaeda cells inside Saudi Arabia, underscores the significance of the Abu-Ali case in the eyes of some U.S. and Saudi counterterrorism officials. But it also points to the difficulties federal prosecutors are likely to have in ever getting some of their most damning evidence before a federal jury, some legal experts say. Since surrendering to Saudi authorities in June 2003, al Ghamdi has essentially disappeared from sight. Law-enforcement officials acknowledge it is highly unlikely that the Saudis will ever make him available to testify in a U.S. courtroom where the circumstances of his interrogations in a Saudi prison would be central in any cross-examination by Abu-Ali's lawyers. "I'd say the chances are slim to none [that al Ghamdi's testimony] ever gets in," said Edward MacMahon, a former lawyer for Abu-Ali who represents a number of high-profile defendants in terrorism cases.
A 23-year-old who was valedictorian of his Islamic high-school class and a former Boy Scout, Abu-Ali's case has become a cause celebre for many Washington, D.C.-area Muslims, who say he was tortured by the Saudis into making false confessions and is now being railroaded by the U.S. government. His lawyer, John Zwerling, on Tuesday described the government's evidence against his client as "preposterous." In testimony during a detention hearing Tuesday, FBI agent Barry Cole expanded on the U.S. government's allegations against Abu-Ali, who was flown back to the United States last week after spending 20 months in a Saudi prison and indicted on charges he provided material support to a terrorist group. Cole told a federal judge that, during a videotaped confession and in later interviews with FBI agents while he was still in Saudi custody, Abu-Ali admitted discussing plans with an Al Qaeda operative to assassinate President Bush. One idea that Abu-Ali discussed was arranging for three snipers to shoot the presidenta level of redundancy that Abu-Ali suggested to make sure the job was successful, Cole testified.
Continued on Page 49
This article starring:
ABU BAKR AL AZDI
al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula
AHMED ABU ALI
al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula
ALI ABD AL RAHMAN AL FAQASI AL GHAMDI
al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula
Edward MacMahon, a former lawyer for Abu-Ali
FBI agent Barry Cole
John Zwerling
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/10/2005 12:44:23 AM ||
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#1
interesting article for the info on WOT
- but -
blah, blah, blah as for kid's chances of getting acquitted. Put yourself on the jury and add up what we know so far. Best he can hope for is a hung jury and another trial.
Yemen, Osama bin Laden's ancestral home, has subdued al Qaeda but the country's fight against terrorism is not over yet, Prime Minister Abdul Qader Bagammal said on Wednesday. "We haven't eradicated terrorism 100 percent. We can't say that there is no intention or action to carry out terrorist acts ... but in relation to al Qaeda we can say 90 percent of the problem has been brought under control," Bagammal told Reuters. "We are still chasing some (militants). When questioning those arrested more names are revealed," he said.
Bagammal linked his country's progress in fighting al Qaeda to intelligence-sharing and cooperation with the United States and Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Algeria which had their share of militant violence in the past. Yemen has also brokered deals with tribes that had once given refuge to al Qaeda, he added. But despite its close cooperation with the United States, which trains Yemeni anti-terrorist squads, Bagammal said Sanaa would not hand over to Washington a prominent Yemeni cleric the U.S. accuses of being a "terrorist". The United States has added Sheikh Abdul-Majid al-Zindani, a senior leader of the opposition Islamic Islah Party, to its list of suspected terrorists, requiring U.S. and Yemeni banks to freeze his assets. Washington accuses Zindani, who runs a religious university in Yemen, of serving as one of bin Laden's spiritual mentors and of influencing and supporting many "terrorist causes." "They (Americans) asked us to freeze his assets. We looked into it and we found no bank accounts for him in Yemen. This man is the deputy of a party that takes part in the government and has more than 50 members in parliament...
Sounds like you've defined what your problem is, then...
"I won't hand him over to the Americans. If the Americans have evidence (against him) let them produce it and we will investigate. We will deal with it according to Yemeni law. The fact that he is accused by the Americans and we have to hand him over ... this is against Yemeni policy and sovereignty. He is a Yemeni citizen and we will defend him." Yemen, which has joined the war on terror since the September 11, 2001 attacks on U.S. cities, has been a major source of recruits for al Qaeda. Ninety of the 300 detainees of the Guantanamo bay in Cuba are Yemenis.
That's... ummm... (carry the 11, divide by the square root of 17...) 30 percent...
Bagammal said Yemen has foiled many al Qaeda attacks against Yemeni and Western targets in the past two years and provided other countries with information that helped abort attacks. Some attacks, he said, were foiled by the militants' own mistakes. "Some had their explosives blown up while preparing for attacks which led to arrests and disclosure of cells."
Red wire-green wire syndrome, one of our favorites...
Bagammal said Yemen was aware that force alone would not resolve the militant problem and was conducting a dialogue with al Qaeda sympathisers to persuade them to abandon violence.
Actually, hunting them down and doing terrible things to them is the best way, though I guess if you find it exciting to play with the uncertain then dialogue certainly works...
The country was also reforming and vetting school and religious books that promote anti-Western hatred and violence. He said al Qaeda attacks has cost Yemen tens of millions of dollars in losses. "The terrorist attacks have had their impact on all sectors of the economy. Tourism, investments and our port activities were badly hit."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/10/2005 12:05:10 AM ||
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A group of men were detained by the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice for trying to help a woman who screamed for help as she was being forcibly taken away by commission members. The incident occurred in a market in Taif. According to Al-Watan newspaper, the men came to the aid of a woman who was begging for help as she was being dragged away by a man who said he was a member of the commission and who insisted on detaining her. The commission member saw the woman getting into a car with a man after she had come into the market with another woman; he then took the driver's car keys which prompted the woman to run back into the mall. The commission member followed her, physically detained her and attempted to drag her into the commission's van. It was at this point that the men intervened on the woman's behalf. The police were called and detained the men who had tried to help the woman as well as the man who was the driver of the car. The woman was released.
A member of the commission in Jeddah was unaware of the incident which took place on Sunday. "We are an agency for monitoring and guiding; our role is to advise and solve problems amicably and politely and to increase public awareness of what is correct behavior," he said. "What that man did does not represent the commission. When we see something wrong, we are not supposed to expose the person making the error." The commission member went on to emphasize that the commission is not a law-enforcement body. "In cases of crimes that affect society, such as selling and manufacturing drugs and alcohol, we always coordinate with the police in raiding the site," he explained.
Various members of the public expressed outrage about the incident in Taif. "Even though what the woman did was wrong, those religious policemen have no right to watch people or detain them," said Samia. "In Islam, it is not right to expose someone who is committing a sin or making a mistake; they should be advised privately and helped to see the error of their ways. And why did the police detain the men who tried to help the woman? Is it now wrong to protect women?" Salah also expressed a strong opinion. "The commission is an advisory and awareness body rather than an executive or judiciary one. This is chaos. How can anyone just approach people and detain them? Such actions are what harms the commission's reputation." Salah went on to say that there should be no force in Islam. "Even though commission members play a positive role in combating alcohol and drug violations and brothels, they do sometimes overstep their limits and go beyond their jurisdiction. Also the man in the car should be punished in public to deter others from such behavior but I don't approve of exposing a woman because a woman's reputation is precious."
Posted by: Fred ||
03/10/2005 00:00:00 AM ||
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#1
Lol - "commission", indeed. Mutawa. This is how low man can go.
#4
I bet the 'Commission' gets de-commissioned when a democratic government comes to power in Saudi. The difference between these yahoos and the Taliban is a matter of a few degrees and a butt-load of oil (no pun intended).
#5
Of course, Sarge. The Saudis are all eddicatered, and got Good Citizenship diplomas at the Madrassah, whereas the Taliban were all ignorant fools who memorized vast swathes of something in a language they didn't understand. And Saudi Arabia has better healthcare, too, hence the placement of the oil.
The Summary Court in Riyadh has asked Al-Watan newspaper to present a detailed reply, within two weeks, to the lawsuit filed a few months ago against the daily by prominent Saudi scholar Sheikh Salman Al-Awdah. In the lawsuit, Al-Awdah accused the Arabic paper of defaming him and printing lies and attributing false fatwas to him. Toward the end of last year, Al-Watan ran an article claiming that the sheikh's son Muaz was caught at the Saudi-Iraqi border while trying to sneak into Iraq and join hands with the resistance forces there. The paper said that Muaz had left a farewell note to his father saying, "We will meet in Heaven, I am going to Iraq."
The paper said that Al-Awdah, who encouraged Saudi young men to go to Iraq, feared that his son might die, and raised the issue with Prince Muhammad ibn Naif, assistant interior minister for security affairs, requesting him to help stop his son from leaving the country. Ahmad Othman Al-Tuwaijri, the scholar's lawyer, said that Al-Awdah has denied in his lawsuit all allegations published by the paper and asked for hard proof of what it had printed. Al-Tuwaijri stated that his client filed the lawsuit in order to stop "all irresponsible acts that tarnish people's reputation and image. Above all, my client wants to help clean this society of those who try to harm its principles, values and traditions." The lawsuit seeks a formal apology in print from the paper stating that all what it had published about the sheikh was untrue.
This article starring:
Ahmad Othman Al-Tuwaijri, the scholar's lawyer
Prince Muhammad ibn Naif
SHEIKH SALMAN AL AWDAH
Learned Elders of Islam
Posted by: Fred ||
03/10/2005 00:00:00 AM ||
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"...Above all, my client wants to help clean this society of those who try to harm its principles, values and traditions.â
The BBC today announced the first round of savings plans to release £139 million a year by 2008, which it says it aims to reinvest in to programmes, but will be at the cost of 1,700 jobs. Shocked staff were told that 980 of them will be made redundant and a further 750 outsourced from the corporation. Union leaders said workers reacted with "anger and disbelief" to the announcement, which the Director General, Mark Thompson, delivered not in person, as was originally intended, but via a video message. Beats e-mail!
A second wave of job cuts is to be announced later this month. Paul McLaughlin, national officer of the National Union of Journalists, said: "We are deeply disappointed that the BBC has chosen to proceed with this level of cuts. This is a very difficult time for workers at the BBC. The corporation is promising so much to the Government but is not delivering anything to the staff." The first round of cuts - more than £35 million more than had been expected - come from the BBC's professional services which include: strategy and distribution, policy and legal, marketing, finance and personnel departments. Bummer, should have started with the editorial board...
The savings are part of Mr Thompson's aim to ensure the BBC can develop a bold content strategy, while becoming much simpler in its operations and business processes. Nearly half of all jobs will go, up to 980, some through staff turnover, others through redundancy, with another 750 posts planned to be outsourced. BBC....the Bangalore Broadcast Corporation!
Now with 20% more juche!
Mr Thompson told senior staff that the BBC Governors had endorsed the plans but would consider these and further savings plans from the content and output divisions as a whole at their meeting next week before giving final approvals. "We have made a strong start, showing we are serious about change and ensuring we are maximising the value of our income for audiences' benefit," said Mr Thomspon. "We need to make the BBC a credible simpler, more agile operation, ready to take the creative lead in a very different, very challenging digital future."
Introducing the British Blogging Corporation.
The announcements come a week after publication of the Government's Green paper on the BBC's Charter, which Secretary of State Tessa Jowell described as a "blueprint for a strong, independent BBC". "But not so independent that we don't take government funding....let's not get crazy here....
A notorious London-based imamdescribed by U.S. officials as Osama bin Laden's principal "ambassador" in Europemay soon be back on the streets because Britain's highest court has struck down an anti-terror law allowing him to be detained without trial. The preacher, known as Abu Qatada, has been held in a British prison for more than two years.
Abu Qatada, whose real name is Omar Mahmoud Mohammed Othman, was arrested and detained by British police in October 2002 under an antiterror law enacted by Tony Blair's government in the wake of the September 11 attacks. The new law, which was strongly backed by Bush administration officials, enabled British authorities to detainwithout formal criminal chargesforeign citizens suspected of using the United Kingdom as a base to foment or plot terrorism.
But late last year, in a development that got little attention in the United States, Britain's highest court, the House of Lords appeals committee, struck down the law, declaring that it violated the European Human Rights Convention by discriminating against foreigners.
Continued on Page 49
This article starring:
ABU QATADA
al-Qaeda
OMAR MAHMUD MOHAMED OTHMAN
al-Qaeda
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/10/2005 12:40:35 AM ||
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"...it violated the European Human Rights Convention by discriminating against foreigners."
Which is why we should no longer be bound by the European Human Rights Convention. It's insanity that the protections provided to British citizens by British law should be extended to every Tom, Dick or Omar who turns up in this country demanding asylum. The only rational response to such people is to KICK THEM OUT, and not waste another penny of taxpayers' money protecting them from the consequences of their criminal activities overseas! It's nothing short of an extortion racket perpetuated by our Government in order to protect the sort of scum who want our very civilisation destroyed.
So what's the Government's response to finding itself unable to keep foreign terrorist suspects behind bars due to inflexible international laws which prevent it from protecting its own citizens from imported jihadi arseholes? Take centuries of British legal traditions and protections, lay them out on the floor, and shit all over them...
#4
Australia locks them all up - anyone who enters illegally or significantly violates their conditions of entry and claims asylum in order to stay. Works really well as illegal entry and asylum seeking is now almost zero. In Australia you can get asylum but you will spend a couple of years behind bars waiting for your claim to be processed. It has the added benefit of driving the Lefties crazy.
#5
I believe that in the UK (and most parliamentary systems), judges can be fired. I wonder if Blair will use his political clout to put these leeches on the public purse back in the private sector.
The Bush administration told the Irish Republican Army on Wednesday that it should disband following the outlawed group's offer to shoot four men responsible for killing a Catholic civilian. The statement was the administration's bluntest criticism yet of the IRA. The call from the U.S. envoy to Northern Ireland, Mitchell Reiss, came a week ahead of St. Patrick's Day when, for the first time in a decade, leaders of the IRA's Sinn Fein party will not be guests of the White House. This year the invitations are going elsewhere — to the five sisters of the IRA's most recent victim, Robert McCartney, a 33-year-old forklift operator and nightclub bouncer.
"It's time for the IRA to go out of business. And it's time for Sinn Fein to be able to say that explicitly, without ambiguity, without ambivalence, that criminality will not be tolerated," Reiss said. He particularly questioned Sinn Fein's claim that most IRA activities — including robbing banks and shooting petty criminals in the limbs — should not be considered crimes. He said that Sinn Fein should begin cooperating with the Northern Ireland police, a mostly Protestant force that once suffered heavily from IRA attacks, and today is being substantially reshaped with support from moderate Catholics.
The IRA, which killed about 1,800 people from 1970 until its 1997 cease-fire, relied on support from its Roman Catholic base as it mounted attacks on businesses, British troops and the predominantly Protestant police force. The group ensured its control of the toughest Catholic quarters by attacking petty criminals and killing people accused of helping the police. In some cases people were attacked for honing in on IRA criminal rackets or insulting IRA figures.
Posted by: Bulldog ||
03/10/2005 3:42:06 AM ||
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#1
Melike. I've been waiting for 35 years as a voter for a President to come along who calls a spade a spade. Finally, we have one. Bush just doesn't dick around like all of his predecessors. Terrorism is not an acceptable course of action - period. Yo, IRA -- time for you lot to bugger off - and for anyone here caught funding you to be dropped in the nearest shithole for 30 years.
#2
Good on GWB. Been waiting a long time for an American president to say this. Notably Gerry Adams will be absent from the White House's St Patrick's Day celebrations this year. The IRA are beginning to make Belfast look like the NW Frontier.
Posted by: Howard UK ||
03/10/2005 5:11 Comments ||
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#3
You are with us or against us in the war on terror. Only the ignorant still buy that one mans terrorist is anopther mans freedom fighter. Those that target civilinas are terrorists. The only good terrorists are dead ones. The days of sending money back to the "old country" for armed struggle are over. Anyone who can't get this through their head can write me from pound me in the ass prison if they live to get there.
#5
GWB has to be the greatest president we've had in my lifetime. Honesty and common sense - how refreshing!
Posted by: Sheik Abu Bin Ali Al-Yahood ||
03/10/2005 7:32 Comments ||
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#6
It's all show biz till he shuts down Noraid and arrests some of the fundraisers under the Patriot Act.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
03/10/2005 7:33 Comments ||
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#7
It's not as if Bush can depend on the boys in Boston to support him anyway. Should have done this on Sept 12 (after all the IRA was training in Libya during the 80s and helping out Colombia baddies in the 90s, that's global reach).
#10
A friend and I were in a Belfast pub in 1992, when a guy comes over and asks if we want to enter a raffle for two round trip tickets, only 5 pound. I asked him what's the destination for the tickets. He said, "I don't know. Maybe Kosovo or someplace like that."
Pub crawling in Belfast, with those armoured trucks driving about, with chains on their sides to stop Molotov cocktails and a machine gunner on the top. Like a scene from Blade Runner.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
03/10/2005 11:15 Comments ||
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#11
aye , its what i call an 'entertaining enviroment' AP :p
Yes, it's the Guardian, so take with a heaping tablespoon (20g) of salt. Nonetheless, the article highlights the difficulties of disengaging with the Saudi octopus. Any thoughts from the peanut gallery on how the U.S. situation compares? Almost a third of the government's arms sales machine is dedicated to selling to a single regime, Saudi Arabia. A Ministry of Defence publication circulated to defence firms and obtained by the Guardian shows the extent of Saudi dependence on Britain to run its air force. According to the document, no fewer than 161 of the department's 600 officials work for the "Saudi Armed Forces Project". The team is headed by Air Vice-Marshal John Thompson, based in central London. He has a place on Deso's [Defence Export Services Organisation, the Whitehall department which sells British weapons round the world] main board, headed by Alan Garwood, a former executive of Britain's biggest arms company, BAE.
Stationed on the ground in Riyadh are two senior military men, Air Commodore Ray Hodgson and Air Commodore John Chandler. They are the British team commander and logistics chief respectively. The two RAF officers head a squad of 54 British officials who are permanently based in Saudi Arabia. The files show that they are distributed between the capital, Riyadh, a navy base at Jubail, and three big Saudi air bases at Dhahran, Khamis and Tabuk. These figures do not include the significant number of RAF air crew who are seconded to the Saudis to fly the Tornados and Hawks which Britain has sold to Riyadh under its longstanding Al Yamamah arms contract.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: trailing wife ||
03/10/2005 00:00:00 AM ||
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Chechnya's mufti Akhmad-khadzhi Shamayev said Shamil Basayev has been and remains the real leader of the extremists in the republic. "He and Doku Umarov command all armed groups and issue orders to carry out sabotage and terrorist attacks," Shamayev emphasized, "their new leader -- Abdul-khalim Saidullayev - is a puppet in the hands of Basayev and the militant young generation of extremists."
"Saidullayev is Maskhadov's protege. After Akhmat Kadyrov denounced Wahhabis, Maskhadov nominated Saidullayev to the post of mufti of "Ichkeria." At that time, he was professing Wahhabism in Argun. However, Saidullayev declined the offer. In Shamayev's view, with the transfer of Maskhadov's powers to Saidullayev, Basayev and Umarov will now have a free hand without any restrictions. "This 'sheikh' is absolutely unknown either in the Islamic world, or in the West. Moreover, he does not enjoy great prestige among Chechnya's religious leaders, because he's known as an advocate of the Wahhabi idea," the mufti said. Saidullayev, however, may have some authority with Maskhadov's associates, he acknowledged.
Sheikh Abdul-khalim has never received any special religious education; he is young, about 30 or 40 years of age. He is an active promoter of the idea to set up in Chechnya and the North Caucasus an Islamic caliphate, Shamayev said. "To carry out terrorist attacks and commit murders of both officials and civilians, the militants need the so-called fetwas - permission by their Shariah court, and no murder could happen without Abdul-khalim's approval," he said. Over the past few years, Wahhabis have killed more than 15 clerics in Chechnya.
This article starring:
ABDUL KHALIM SAIDULLAIEV
Chechnya
Akhmad-khadzhi Shamayev
Akhmat Kadyrov
DOKU OMAROV
Chechnya
SHAMIL BASAIEV
Chechnya
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/10/2005 10:57:12 AM ||
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A number of press reports claim Chechen illegal armed groups have elected one Akhmad Fairuz, Sheikh Abdulkhalim, a Saudi native, or, according to other sources, Abdul-Khalim Saidullayev, as Maskhadov's successor. "This name does not ring a bell to me at all, a man who has been staying in Chechnya all the time and who perfectly knows the situation in the republic," Dzhabrailov said Thursday. "Illegal armed groups acting in Chechnya have lost a symbol in Maskhadov's person," and the reports about Abdulkhalim's appointment "show there is panic and chaos among the guerilla leaders," he said.
This article starring:
ABDUL KHALIM SAIDULLAIEV
Chechnya
AKHMAD FAIRUZ
Chechnya
ASLAN MASKHADOV
Chechnya
Chairman of the Chechen State Council Taus Dzhabrailov
SHEIKH ABDULKHALIM
Chechnya
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/10/2005 10:55:45 AM ||
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The killing of top Chechen rebel Aslan Maskhadov leaves the insurgency largely in the hands of Shamil Basayev, the most brutal of the warlords a development that could undermine any chance of peace even as the Kremlin celebrates a success in the long conflict.
On Wednesday, there was uncertainty over what the death might mean, with Russia facing the fundamental question of how much an insurgency depends on its leaders a dilemma faced by Israel in the targeted killings of key Palestinian militants and the United States in the hunt for the top men in al-Qaida.
Russia hopes the Chechen insurgency might be hobbled, with a series of militant leaders systematically eliminated over the years. In recent months the Russians also appear to have reaped some gains from a tough policy that apparently includes detaining rebels' relatives.
And the Chechens might suffer diplomatically too, because Maskhadov was respected by some European mediators as a possible negotiator a mantle not likely to pass to Basayev. The death of the more moderate Chechen leader could leave the Europeans with no major figure they can push the Russians to negotiate with.
In Russia, some legislators hailed Maskhadov's killing as a sign that Russia, which has suffered repeated terrorist attacks, might be on the right track at last.
"When terrorists feel they are literally being trailed, fighting groups are systematically being detained, when in fact a top leader is eliminated, this creates an atmosphere in which there's no place for terrorist attacks," said Vladimir Vasilyev, head of the security committee of the lower house of parliament.
But there appeared to be the prospect of a stepped-up Chechen effort to avenge the killing and to prove the cause lives on.
"Certainly I think military activity will be activated," Maskhadov's London-based envoy Akhmed Zakayev told The Associated Press, echoing the threats of other militants. "It will be planned operations that will be carried out by our armed forces as long as the Russian occupiers continue violence in Chechnya."
Even some supporters of the Kremlin campaign seemed to doubt it would force an end to attacks especially since Maskhadov was believed to directly control comparatively few of Chechnya's estimated 1,500 rebels.
"I don't think Maskhadov's death is such an irreplaceable loss for the rebels," said Aslambek Aslakhanov, a Chechen who serves as Russian President Vladimir Putin's special adviser on the North Caucasus region.
But diplomatically, Maskhadov's loss may have real impact.
He was seen as a relative moderate in comparison with the Islamic fundamentalist Basayev and had repeatedly called for negotiations to end the fighting. His suggestion that compromise was possible and the fact that he was Chechnya's elected president for a brief period of de facto independence and relative calm lent him credibility and support among Chechens tired of the conflict.
"For me, the death of Maskhadov is a great pain. He was aiming for peace and wanted to achieve it, but the Kremlin didn't want this," said a resident of the Chechen capital Grozny, who gave his name only as Shudin.
Maskhadov was blamed by the Russians for terrorist acts, but he usually denied the accusations.
Russia can now step up the hunt for Basayev, its most-wanted fugitive, who has more than a decade of experience in evading Russian dragnets.
In any case, with Maskhadov's "violent death ⊠a new period has begun in the modern history of the Russian-Chechen military confrontation, which not only allows for no negotiations, but also for no end to the war," rebel ideologue Movladi Udugov wrote on a rebel Web site.
Zakayev suggested the new phase could bring more terrorist attacks, saying: "It's my personal fear that the radical part of the Chechen resistance, after what happened yesterday, will feel its hands untied and freed from any moral responsibility."
Polish Foreign Minister Adam Rotfeld called the killing "a political mistake because ⊠Maskhadov was the only partner with whom an agreement could be sought." He added: "I do not exclude that those who carried out the killing wanted to cross out the possibility of an agreement."
The Council of Europe said it regretted the killing and urged that "the effort to find a political solution to the situation in Chechnya must continue."
Undermining the prospect is the increasingly jittery atmosphere in Chechnya, where violence attributed to the pro-Kremlin local security forces is expected to spread.
Recent months have seen an upsurge in clashes between Islamic militants and federal Russian forces in practically every republic in the Caucasus Mountains region fighting not directly linked to Chechnya, but perhaps inspired by the conflict there.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/10/2005 12:21:16 AM ||
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Chechen insurgents vowed Wednesday to wage an Islamic "holy war" against Russian control of the republic after separatist leader Aslan Maskhadov was slain by Russian special forces. Russian officials, however, predicted that Maskhadov's death Tuesday would deal a sharp setback to insurgents in the mainly Muslim republic who are seeking independence. Aslambek Aslakhanov, an adviser to President Vladimir Putin, said he believed the leading rebels "will now enter a fray to take Maskhadov's place," but none would be able to match the former leader's ability to attract foreign political and financial support. "The destruction of Maskhadov therefore will reduce the funding of gangs," he said.
Guerrilla spokesman Movladi Udugov, in a statement posted on a rebel website, said Maskhadov's death does give Putin a fresh argument to use in refusing to negotiate with the rebels, Udugov added, because, "There is, indeed, no one to have talks with in Chechnya anymore." The result, he said, will be continued war. Maskhadov was killed in the village of Tolstoy-Yurt, about 12 miles north of Grozny, the Chechen capital. Authorities said the homeowner and three other people, associates or bodyguards of the Chechen leader, were captured. The daily newspaper Kommersant, citing a participant in the assault, said soldiers had broken in the door of the house and detained the homeowner, described as a relative of Maskhadov.
Perhaps they should start visiting the relatives of Basayev?
The owner confirmed that the insurgent chief was in the bunker, the paper reported. Negotiations were held for nearly an hour, Kommersant said. Maskhadov refused to surrender, but the three other people emerged and the special forces then threw in grenades, according to Chechen Interior Minister Ruslan Alkhanov as quoted by Kommersant. However, a pro-Moscow Chechen official said Tuesday that the military had intended to capture Maskhadov and that he had been killed by a bullet fired by one of his own bodyguards.
That actually sounds more likely to me...
Ramzan Kadyrov, first deputy prime minister of the pro-Kremlin Chechen administration, said Maskhadov's death would free forces to search for the most radical leader, Shamil Basayev.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/10/2005 12:28:15 AM ||
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#1
So who was "talking" before? I am pretty sure putty will fight you wanna be turbans to your death. I think all the talking stopped many moons ago come Choctaw Perhaps if you spent less time with your asses in the air praying to allen you might have noticed. Putty is willing to fight you to the very last Russian conscript. He is no where near running out of them.
There are about 1,500 militants active in Chechnya, although they lack a leader capable of uniting their dispersed units, Chechen State Council Chairman Taus Dzhabrailov told Interfax on Wednesday. "Currently, there are approximately 100 militant groups, with a total number of no more than 1,500 men. Approximately half of these forces, including international mercenaries, are under [field commander Shamil] Basayev's command or cooperating with them. But mainly, they are dispersed forces and there is no one in Chechnya who could unite them," Dzhabrailov said.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/10/2005 12:24:53 AM ||
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FOR a man who rarely appears in public, North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il is pressed for time. Mr Kim's emotions got the better of him during a recent meeting with factory managers and those who run small businesses when he said the demands of running the state had left him little time to sleep, a Japanese website that monitors North Korean news reported yesterday. 'I wish one second could be one hour so that I can work more for the nation and the people,' he said, according to Uriminzokkiri.com, which cited the Rodong Sinmun communist daily. He also told the group he would be able to take a good rest when his people live well. The 22.5 million North Koreans in the impoverished state rely on global charity.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/10/2005 12:50:39 AM ||
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#1
I'm sure there are millions of starving North Koreans who would be happy to see to it that Kim sleeps forever and ever, amen.
Posted by: Jonathan ||
03/10/2005 10:55 Comments ||
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Kim's problem is that he hasn't figured out how to make Soylant Green.
At the time, the Hollywood actor had never heard of al-Qaida or its reclusive leader. But Osama bin Laden, it seems, knew all about Russell Crowe. In one of the more unlikely terrorist plots, the Oscar winner has revealed that he was a kidnap target for the network, and that the FBI was so concerned about his safety that it gave him protection for four years. The FBI told him that terrorists had devised a "cultural destabilisation plan" that involved seizing high-profile actors.
In an interview in the latest edition of Australian GQ, Crowe admits he was first approached about the plot in the months leading up to the Oscars in 2001. "That was the first conversation in my life that I'd ever heard the phrase al-Qaida. "And it was something to do with some recording picked up by a French policewoman, I think, in either Libya or Algiers. It was about - and here's another little touch of irony - taking iconographic Americans out of the picture as a sort of cultural destabilisation plan." Crowe was born in New Zealand and grew up in Australia.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/10/2005 12:35:06 AM ||
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#1
My guess is poor little Dinky-Doinker treated Crowe's performance in Gladiator as a kind of personal insult, or an insult to Islam. Binny's heroes in that movie would have been the unseen guys who raped Crowe's wife and battered his son to death.
Muslim clerics in Spain issued what they called the world's first fatwa, or Islamic edict, against Osama bin Laden on Thursday, the first anniversary of the Madrid train bombings, calling him an apostate and urging others of their faith to denounce the al-Qaida leader. I think Al-Aska Paul beat them to it long ago...
The Anchorage Al-Aska Mosque 'n' Martyrs R Us Mini Mart features tomorrow's fatwas today!
The ruling was issued by the Islamic Commission of Spain, the main body representing the country's 1 million-member Muslim community. The commission represents 200 or so mostly Sunni mosques, or about 70 percent of all mosques in Spain. The commission's secretary general, Mansur Escudero, said the group had consulted with Muslim leaders in other countries, such as Morocco - home to most of the jailed suspects in the bombings - Algeria and Libya, and had their support. "They agree," Escudero said, referring to the Muslim leaders in the three North African countries. "What I want is that they say so publicly." I'm sure they'll get right on it.
Yah. Sure. You betcha. Real Soon Now.
The fatwa said that according to the Quran "the terrorist acts of Osama bin Laden and his organization al-Qaida ... are totally banned and must be roundly condemned as part of Islam." It added: "Inasmuch as Osama bin Laden and his organization defend terrorism as legal and try to base it on the Quran ... they are committing the crime of 'istihlal' and thus become apostates that should not be considered Muslims or treated as such." The Arabic term 'istihlal' refers to the act of making up one's own laws. Escudero said a fatwa can be issued by any Muslim leader who leads prayer sessions and as he serves such a role, he himself lawfully issued the edict.
A imam named Escudero?
He called it an unprecedented condemnation of bin Laden. "We felt now we had the responsibility and obligation to make this declaration," he said in an interview. "I hope there is a positive reaction from Muslims," he added.
"And I hope the fundos don't try to kill me," he added under his breath.
Asked if the edict meant Muslims had to help police try to arrest the world's most wanted man - who is believed to be hiding along the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan - Escudero said: "We don't get involved in police affairs but we do feel that all Muslims are obliged to ... keep anyone from doing unjustified damage to other people."
#1
only took 3 1/2 years for the first fatwah to be issued against a mass murderer of innocents by the ROPâ¢. Interesting it was in response to Madrid, not Sept 11.
and in response, the silence from the muslim community is.....deafening.
ISLAMIC extremists behind the train bombings in Madrid a year ago were planning other attacks before they blew themselves up as police raided their apartment, an investigating judge has told Spain's El Pais newspaper. A video found in the rubble warned of "new attacks and attacks against various targets: schools, a Jewish centre in Avila". Magistrate Olga Sanchez, who is heading the probe into the train blasts, said. "The suicide, happily, put an end to those plans," she said.
The seven suspects killed themselves and one police officer on April 3 last year as police raided the apartment building. They set off bombs similar to those used to kill 191 people on four crowded commuter trains in the attacks of March 11 — one of Europe's worst terror attacks. Ms Sanchez said the group, who included the suspected ringleaders of the cell behind the train bombings, "had no intention of committing suicide" but were instead bent on launching more attacks from April 4, 2004. That was the deadline they had fixed for Spain to meet their demand for the withdrawal of its troops from the US-led military deployment in Iraq. Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, who took over as Prime Minister in elections on March 14, three days after the train attacks, announced after his victory he was pulling those soldiers out as per an electoral promise.
Posted by: tipper ||
03/10/2005 6:51:46 AM ||
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A quiet revolution has overtaken Spain's security forces since al-Qaeda detonated four bombs on packed commuter trains in Madrid a year ago tomorrow.
The police, defence ministry, paramilitary civil guard and National Intelligence Centre (CNI) now exchange notes once a week. A year ago they barely communicated at all.
Clashing data bases and incompatible computer programmes are being integrated. The civil guard, which controls borders, and national police are keeping separate investigative units, but are aiming for one common DNA analysis system finally to allow quick cross-checking of each unit's suspects, an important flaw highlighted after March 11.
Arabic-speaking officers are being redeployed to intelligence operations. There are demands for more personnel, better cross-border co-operation, specialised training in Islamic fundamentalism and more resources to profile possible trouble-makers before they enter Spain.
Al-Qaeda has replaced Eta, the Basque separatist group, as the focus of anti-terrorist activity in Spain. More than 20 people - mainly Moroccans - are in prison awaiting trial in connection with the bombings.
Six men implicated in the Madrid case blew themselves up weeks after the attack as police cornered them in a flat in Madrid. At least four subsequent alleged bomb plots - including one targeting the court building where terrorist-related investigations are based - have been foiled, according to police.
Officers admit there is still work to be done - professional jealousies and cultural and regional differences still impede the flow of information between the various security bodies.
In many respects, the police are lucky. The clamour for answers and justice forced them quickly to overcome feelings of guilt for failing to thwart the Madrid bombers and get on with tackling the newly identified threat to national security.
By contrast, many argue that Spain's civilian population have not been allowed to begin the healing process.
The reason, according to critics, is the worst kind of party politics. Despite a four-year-old pact to keep politics out of the war on terrorism, a parliamentary commission set up in July to draw security lessons from the attack has often been reduced to an arena for point-scoring and blame-apportioning.
"Mr Zapatero is still trying to legitimise his electoral victory," says Eduardo Nolla, politics lecturer at the Universidad San Pablo-CEU in Madrid. "So in many senses, the electoral campaign is still going on, at the cost of the victims and the whole of Spain."
This was not lost on Pilar Manjón, who in December addressed the inquiry on behalf of the 192 victims and their families. Millions of Spaniards tuned in to a discourse - broadcast live on radio - in which she accused the parties of "appropriating the commission for playground politics".
She said: "You all know, although it is unpleasant to hear, they you have turned [the victims] into loose change for a political game."
Ms Manjón, like many observers, suggests the commission should have been non-partisan. In any case, many point to the Senate hearings after the September 11 2001 attacks in the US as proof of what can be achieved when ideological differences are buried in the greater national interest.
The commission tomorrow is expected to deliver its preliminary findings and recommend 136 measures to tighten security in Spain, upgrade international intelligence-gathering and improve support networks for all victims of terrorism.
Police and security forces are already busy implementing the most urgent reforms.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/10/2005 12:11:36 AM ||
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#1
"Mr Zapatero is still trying to legitimise his electoral victory," says Eduardo Nolla, politics lecturer at the Universidad San Pablo-CEU in Madrid. "So in many senses, the electoral campaign is still going on, at the cost of the victims and the whole of Spain."
That is why the back stabbers in Spain can rot. They have taknbe up with "Le Worm" A pox on them and their posterity.
Resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is key to the wider issue of global peace and security, but mistrust of the United States is hamstringing the process in the Arab world, a conference on tackling terrorism in Madrid heard Wednesday.
Comes as a surprise, huh?
Yeah. if only Israel were pushed into the sea and all the Jooos in the world fall down dead, they'd have to invent something else to seethe about live happily ever after.
Experts from more than 50 countries are attending the conference, which culminates with Friday's first anniversary of the Madrid train bombings. Wednesday saw the intractable issue of the Middle East take center stage, with Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat and Israel's former Mossad head, Efraim Halevy, jousting over the issue. Erekat insisted the existing "road map" for peace had to be a prelude to a wider settlement. "Let's get to the endgame. All issues are doable," Erekat said. "But don't tie my hands, tie my legs, throw me to the sea and ask me to swim," he pleaded, adding that the unilateral nature of the decision by the Israeli government to leave Gaza had "changed negotiations to dictation." Erekat said as long as the Israeli occupation existed, regardless of the impending withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, Palestinians would feel excluded and humiliated.
He added that the United States should look beyond Gaza if it wanted to see a real Israel-Palestinian settlement. "I hope President [George W.] Bush will find it in his heart to say Gaza is the end of phase one of the road map," he said. "I have a 17-year-old boy, Ali," he said. "I don't want him to become a suicide bomber." Erekat argued that Israel causes the violence by denying Palestinians their homeland, economy and dignity.
In response, Halevy, now head of the Center for Strategic and Political Studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, said: "We must make sure that terrorism does not dictate the political agenda. Once the genie was out of the bottle it was no longer possible to control it." The moderator of the panel they were on, Rob Malley, director of a U.S. Middle East think tank, suggested that while the United States wanted to foster Arab democracy generally, it had an image problem. He warned that terrorism and democracy could progress simultaneously in theaters such as Iraq and it was up to Washington to prove it could be even-handed in the region. Malley concluded that the United States "has to be seen as acting not in self interest but for the good of the Arabs."
On the sidelines of the confernce, the Arab League and Spain agreed to increase cooperation in fighting terrorism by creating a system for exchanging information. After talks with Arab League chief Amr Moussa, Interior Minister Jose Antonio Alonso said that good intelligence was crucial for fighting terrorism and that Madrid and the Arab League were to encourage "a more fluid exchange of information."
Whoopdy doo.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/10/2005 00:00:00 AM ||
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The Pentagon's widest-ranging examination of prisoner abuse at U.S. detention facilities has concluded that there was no deliberate high-level policy that led to numerous cases of mistreatment, and instead blames inept leadership at low levels and confusion over changing interrogation rules, according to government and defense officials who have read the report.
Vice Adm. Albert T. Church III's inquiry, which included reviews of several earlier military investigations, found there is "no single overarching explanation" for the abuse and that many of them occurred when soldiers came in contact with detainees on the battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan rather than in U.S. detention facilities. It also found that interrogators, for the most part, followed U.S. and international standards for treating detainees humanely and that "there is no link between approved interrogation techniques and detainee abuse."
While the review largely summarizes previous military reports about Defense Department detention operations, it specifically points out that aggressive efforts to increase the quality of human intelligence after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks might have led Pentagon officials to approve the use of interrogation techniques that were on the borderline of acceptable treatment. As previously disclosed, the report says military lawyers initially debated the use of 39 sometimes controversial techniques -- such as water boarding, a tactic that mimics drowning -- but pared that list to 35. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld approved 24 techniques.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/10/2005 12:59:47 AM ||
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Minutemess Patrol
Just the ticket: White supremacists and vigilantes 'guarding' border 1
Mar. 9, 2005 12:00 AM
If 700-odd people wanted to stage a protest that would have an impact on illegal immigration, they could show up for a few of President Bush's appearances around the country.
The "we're mad as hell" message could be well aimed at Congress from the National Mall in Washington, D.C.
Those are a couple of examples of how people who wanted to make a positive, patriotic contribution would use their constitutional right of assembly to petition a government that is answerable to the people.
Instead, the so-called Minuteman Project is putting out the cybercall to mass in southern Arizona next month and take the job of patrolling the border into their own hands.
Cochise County Supervisor Paul Newman2 calls them "gun-toting vigilantes." Tombstone City Councilmember Bill Barlow 3welcomes the tourism revenues they are likely to generate.
Boy, howdy, better lay in a stock of beer and hot dogs!
As if it weren't enough of a circus, White supremacists linked to the Minuteman Project via the Internet as "A call for action on part of ALL ARYAN SOLDIERS." 4
To their credit, organizers of the Minuteman Project say they are working to keep overt racists out of their party.
But when you issue the call to get your guns and meet at the border to prevent undocumented immigrants from entering the United States, it should be no surprise that Aryan Nation members think it's their kind of picnic.
You don't have to be a racist to want an end to illegal immigration; that's a goal this newspaper and most Americans support.
But it doesn't take more than a few functioning brain cells to understand that the idea of taking up arms to block people of color from entering the country appeals to White supremacists.
The Minuteman Project is supposed to be a "peaceful protest," according to creator Jim Gilchrist5. Internet advertising for a month of demonstrations and vigilante border patrolling supposedly netted more than 700 volunteers and big-time national media coverage.
But c'mon, guys, this is more about Deputy Dawg than effecting change. Law enforcement doesn't need or want a bunch of armed good ol' boys getting in the way of a dangerous job.
Paul K. Charlton, U.S. attorney for the District of Arizona 6, put it well: "When people act as vigilantes, they put themselves at risk, they put other law-abiding citizens at risk, and they put law enforcement at risk."
This country could definitely use a few well-placed protests to demand that the president and Congress focus on reforming an immigration policy that is deadly and unenforceable.
If those protests were staged in Washington, they might actually have an impact.
Doing that would take real work, real organizing and a real, unselfish commitment to solve a significant national problem.
But it wouldn't be nearly as much fun for a bunch of soldier-of-fortune wannabes as playing Minutemen along the border.7
1 Arizona Republic Puts Bias in Sub-Headline. Yawn. Typical. 2 Democrat. Not to be confused with the actor, though politics similar. He was the subject of a recall attempt in 2002. Webpage As Cochise Co. Supervisor 3 Small Businessman, Owner "Bill Barlow Enterprises" City of Tombstone-Barlow has no individual page 4 There they go again, and the caveat is in small type in the next line, followed by more bias, emphasizing the rogue element. I could say, "Being in favor of Atzlan, the Arizona Republic wants to emphasize fascist elements who want to hijack the immigration issue for their own purposes." And, I would be equally guilty of the same kind of bias the other way. Then, "You don't have to be a racist to want an end to illegal immigration; that's a goal this newspaper and most Americans support.". How condescending. 5 Jim Gilchrist, Marine Vietnam Vet was on Scarborough Country. You have to page down past the debate between Weasley Clark, and one of our favorite leftys, Christopher Hitchins, debating the Iraq Election. 6 Paul Charlton 7 Sounds like a typical hand-wringing bureaucrat to me. Both sides have them. Excuse me Mr. Charlton, you appear to recognize the problem, but ignore the deafness of Washington officials except Cong. Tancredo. YOU could help with your suggestion, but you probably fear getting fired, so you make snide remarks, and fell good. And, the AZ republic calls you a "good" Republican...
#1
No mention of the great April 1st rally of the Minutemen, and how that really vicious central and south American gang leader is demanding that his gang "make an example" out of them on that day--the closest thing to a 'scheduled' terrorist attack. I could imagine a pickup truck or two of these *ssholes with machine guns attacking a Minuteman position, and I can even imagine them killing a Minuteman or two; but then they have to drive out of there with several hundred armed men forming a posse after them. Unless La Migra comes to the aid of these criminals, they are going to be propped up on boards to have their pictures taken just like the Younger gang, so long ago.
Tie confirmed on TV this morning Chicago police said Thursday that detectives have been sent to a Milwaukee suburb after being notified about a possible suicide in that suburb. Police would not confirm if the shooting was related to the slayings of a federal judge's mother and husband 10 days ago, police spokesman Hector Alfaro said. A published report said a man who shot himself in the head in West Allis, Wis., left a suicide note claiming responsibility for the slayings of U.S. District Judge Joan Humphrey Lefkow's mother and husband.
Members of the task force investigating the deaths of Michael Lefkow, 64, and Donna Humphrey, 89, said police stopped the man's van at a traffic stop around 6 p.m. Wednesday, the Chicago Tribune, citing unnamed sources, reported in Thursday's editions. West Allis police said they planned to hold a Thursday morning press conference but would not confirm if the press conference was related to the Lefkow slayings or the possible suicide. As police approached the van Wednesday, the man shot himself in the head, the Tribune reported.
Investigators said the man claimed he shot Judge Lefkow's family in a suicide note that included details not released to the public in the case, according to the newspaper. Judge Lefkow found her husband and mother shot to death in the basement of her home when she returned from work Feb. 28. Investigators also discovered .22 caliber shells in the man's van that are the same caliber as the casings found in Judge Lefkow's home, the Tribune reported. Authorities were investigating whether Judge Lefkow had ruled against the man in a civil case, according to the newspaper, which cited unnamed sources close to the case. The man's suicide note said that the judgment had cost the him "his house, his job and family," according to the Tribune.
Posted by: Spot ||
03/10/2005 6:47:49 AM ||
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More than three years after the September 11 attacks, and $170m (£88m) later, the FBI has abandoned an attempt to upgrade its computer database, hampering America's ability to track suspected terrorists.
FBI director Robert Mueller told Congress he took full responsibility for the failure of the project, known as the virtual case file (VCF). He also warned that the new project would take a further 3 years to complete. "It's my fault for not having put the appropriate persons in position to review that contract and assure that it was on track," Mr Mueller said. "I am tremendously disappointed that we did not come through with virtual case file, but by the same token, I see this as an opportunity."
He said the FBI would now start from scratch, and look for a more updated, flexible system using off-the-shelf software.
Frank Wolf, a Republican congressman who chairs the committee controlling the FBI purse-strings noted a previous failed upgrade attempt and urged Mr Mueller to get it right this time. "I really think it's important that the bureau find the most knowledgeable people with regard to technology before you take the next step because they've kind of failed on two different occasions. And failure on the third one would be just devastating," Mr Wolf said.
At the time of the September 11 attacks, the FBI was struggling with the most antiquated computer systems in America. The operating system was three decades old, and most of the bureau's field offices did not even have internet connections. For example, there was no way to transmit a digital photograph of a terrorist suspect. The commission investigating the 9/11 attacks found that shortcomings in the FBI's filing and archive system may have played a role in its failure to detect the al-Qaida plot.
An FBI official said yesterday that the bureau had made significant progress since then, installing new computers and a new networking system. The virtual case file was supposed to be a third phase of that upgrade project, which would have allowed FBI agents to enter new information on a case into the system in a way that would make it available to other agents and analysts. "At the moment, you have to print out a hard copy of a case and fax it or send it to another office," the official said.
The collapse of the VCF project coincided with another embarrassment for the bureau. The FBI admitted its email system had been compromised by computer hackers who had gained access to some internal documents, although officials said those did not include active cases. The urgency underlying the FBI's computer modernisation was emphasised by Mr Mueller's disclosure that "special interest aliens", people from countries where al-Qaida is known to be active, have crossed into the US from Mexico using false identities.
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/10/2005 12:21:10 AM ||
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#1
more updated, flexible system - When people told me they wanted a flexible system, I used to push a blank sheet of paper across the table and tell them "That is the most flexible system I know." Some people got it. Not many though.
#3
They should talk to Fred. They don't know what they're doing - and it's our money. I could say sooo much more, having designed and written big-assed monsters for the last 30 years, but it would be a waste. Everyone has their favorite dog to enter, such as a wiki-based model, but it will end up being custom and expensive, no matter what is available or what they say.
Fibbie Mgmt. Sigh. Geez, you suck like a perfect F5. Talk to Fred -- or talk to the hand, you morons.
#5
Yep - the monster they were fooling around with finally croaked - as it was clear it would do way back when. I just do not believe in employing fools - and Fibbie upper management is all about image and sending "messages" and sucking up to congressional committees - resulting in political waste and failure, instead of technology and law enforcement triumphs. This is not the first major Fibbie IT fuckup, just the latest and, probably, the most expensive.
#6
This is the outcome of ALL government custom software projects excluding those in hard science. Scientists know how software works. They don't overpay and they don't get screwed very often. The FBI, IRS, whom ever allways go over budget and end up with an unusable one off system.
Clue 1 Decide what you want and stick to it. Don't change your mind every 2 weeks and toss all previous work in the trash can. (normal way government does custom software.)
Clue 3. Buy off the shelf solutions just like real succsssful businesses do.
Clue 3. Hire real software engineers and coders to keep it running and secure and to slap a "custom" front end on the unchanged base comercial applications.
Clue 4. Fire anyone who can't understand Clues 1 through 3
#7
SPoD, It is all #1.
There may not be a suitable off-the-shelf commercial app available for their specific requirements--if yes, then follow your scenario, if not, there ARE capable people to do it. But it all (no matter if the base is off-the-shelf commercial app or custom made) hinges on #1.
#8
SPOD there is one place where they get programs that work.
The military - especially in the Intelligence areas. The brainiacs at NSA, for example. Mobile for the end users, robust, and relatively simple to operate and maintain - and internetowrked!
Maybe the FBI should shove its "Not Invented Here" pride, and simply ask what military software it can put to use, and get someone to install it, and then customize off that base.
There is probably plenty of GOTs (Government off the shelf) stuff sitting around if they'd drop the "must be special for the FBI" attitude.
#10
The stuff the military does is more "science" than anything else. The NSA can teach any and everyone about "computer security." They do hire real swoftware engineers and coders. They get Clue #1 because they don't get "do overs" in their line of work.
#12
perhaps I can interest anyone in a zx81 with no network support?
Surely it couldnt be any worse than the existing fbi database .. Cross system intergration may be a problem though , but not an £88 million problem ! hehe
From what I've heard of the requirements a good start would be a CRM system. With all the built in marketing / contract / contact, leads / etc. features all you need to do is change the terminology a little bit and voila, case file management.
I've done software customization for the feds and the only thing wrong with the 5 rules is that your lucky if they make it 2 HOURS no less weeks without changing the spec. I've worked at some of the biggest companies in the country and the absolute worst internal politics there was 2 orders of magnitude better than the feds.
Net aware and secure and in conjunction with ssh it can broadcast to anywhere securely. Agents can use it from a Palm Pilot if need be. With a web interface over ssl the db is from the starting gate custom.
#23
You assholes keep your hands off my Imsai 8080.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
03/10/2005 20:05 Comments ||
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#24
I believe I may be able to procure Minsk-32 (if the scrapyard did not get their hands on it already). Russian parts, American parts... does not matter, it's all Made in Taiwan anyway!
#26
Cost, Schedule, Quality - anybody can get two of the three.
Posted by: Bobby ||
03/10/2005 23:08 Comments ||
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#27
SPOD there is one place where they get programs that work.
The military - especially in the Intelligence areas. The brainiacs at NSA, for example. Mobile for the end users, robust, and relatively simple to operate and maintain - and internetowrked!
Maybe the FBI should shove its "Not Invented Here" pride, and simply ask what military software it can put to use, and get someone to install it, and then customize off that base.
There is probably plenty of GOTs (Government off the shelf) stuff sitting around if they'd drop the "must be special for the FBI" attitude.
#28
SPOD there is one place where they get programs that work.
The military - especially in the Intelligence areas. The brainiacs at NSA, for example. Mobile for the end users, robust, and relatively simple to operate and maintain - and internetowrked!
Maybe the FBI should shove its "Not Invented Here" pride, and simply ask what military software it can put to use, and get someone to install it, and then customize off that base.
There is probably plenty of GOTs (Government off the shelf) stuff sitting around if they'd drop the "must be special for the FBI" attitude.
A secret FBI report obtained by ABC News concludes that while there is no doubt al Qaeda wants to hit the United States, its capability to do so is unclear.
"Al-Qa'ida leadership's intention to attack the United States is not in question," the report reads. (All spellings are as rendered in the original report.) "However, their capability to do so is unclear, particularly in regard to 'spectacular' operations. We believe al-Qa'ida's capability to launch attacks within the United States is dependent on its ability to infiltrate and maintain operatives in the United States."
And for all the worry about Osama bin Laden's sleeper cells or agents in the United States, a secret FBI assessment concludes it knows of none.
The 32-page assessment says flatly, "To date, we have not identified any true 'sleeper' agents in the US," seemingly contradicting the "sleeper cell" description prosecutors assigned to seven men in Lackawanna, N.Y., in 2002.
"Limited reporting since March indicates al-Qa'ida has sought to recruit and train individuals to conduct attacks in the United States, but is inconclusive as to whether they have succeeded in placing operatives in this country," the report reads. "US Government efforts to date also have not revealed evidence of concealed cells or networks acting in the homeland as sleepers."
It also differs from testimony given by FBI Director Robert Mueller, who warned in the past that several sleeper cells were probably in place.
"Our greatest threat is from al Qaeda cells in the United States that we have not yet been able to identify," Mueller said at a Senate Select Intelligence Committee hearing in February 2003. "Finding and rooting out al Qaeda members once they have entered the United States and have had time to establish themselves is our most serious intelligence and law enforcement challenge."
When the secret report was issued last month, on Feb. 16, Mueller testified at a hearing before the same committee that the lack of evidence concerned him. "I am concerned about what we are not seeing," he said.
The report does cite several cases in which individuals have been seen as potential sleeper agents, including a member of the Saudi Arabian Air Force training at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas.
The Saudi was sent home after it was discovered he provided information to al Qaeda figures in Saudi Arabia, including "coordinates on landmarks in the US," the report says.
"It's not surprising because we believe the Saudi military is infiltrated at the junior officer level in Saudi Arabia," said Dick Clarke, a former White House counterterrorism czar and now an ABC News Consultant. "And there are so many of them who come here for training."
The report also says al Qaeda is shifting tactics because its leaders are aware of profiles singling out adult Arab males.
"Al-Qa'ida places a premium on operatives who are not, or at least appear not to be, Arab, particularly those with European or Asian features, according to various detainee reporting," the report reads. "Detainees also report that al-Qa'ida is interested in recruiting US citizens to participate in US operations, particularly African-American converts to Islam."
But the report continues that "US recruits are hard to find and al-Qa'ida detainees have reported that US citizens can be difficult to work with, one senior detainee claimed that US citizens and others who grew up in the West, were too independent and thought they knew more about US operations than senior planners."
In addition, women and married couples with children are being actively recruited, according to the report.
"A senior al-Qa'ida detainee instructed an operative who is currently in US custody, to settle in the United States with his family and maintain a low profile before eventually conducting an attack," the report reads. "Al-Qa'ida operatives have also married US women to obtain US visas and foreign documentation from other countries, according to sensitive reporting."
The FBI says it takes no solace in the lack of evidence, or about what it is not seeing.
"Individual operatives who possess a clean passport, have not come to the attention of intelligence agencies overseas, and lack a criminal record are unlikely to attract the attention of security agencies in the United States, unless they are in contact with known extremists," according to the report. "Al-Qa'ida has altered its operative profile, making it more difficult to screen visa applicants at embassies and individuals entering the United States at airports and other border crossings."
And the report suggests that instead of actual sleeper agents, lying in wait, al Qaeda may rely on disaffected Americans or other sympathizers, who might pick easier, softer targets such as shopping malls.
Clarke warned, "We have reason to believe that techniques like that and others we shouldn't talk about are well known to terrorists around the world."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/10/2005 12:03:47 AM ||
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Sigh. The systemically blind leading the willfully blind and dropping what precious little intel they have as warning morsels along the way, like a demented al Heidi. If this is truly a "secret" document, yadda3, then ABCNews is definitely to be numbered among the enemy.
#2
And is it not possible the FBI could be correct?
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
03/10/2005 8:17 Comments ||
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no doubt al Qaeda wants to hit the United States, its capability to do so is unclear.by ABC
I don't know ...I was just thinking that I wished I could get paid writing something as lame as that. Duh.
But agreed - they do seem to give up too much info. Not surprising since we know which side they are on. We can only hope those who make the decision to do it will be on the plane.
#5
FBI Still too top heavy with Bureaucrats. Read 1,000 Years For Revenge - it will make you loathe the FBI and how inept and turf conscious the management is.
Edited for relevant information. Moderators, please file where appropriate -- I'm not sure this is the right place. Thanks!
Data broker LexisNexis on Wednesday said that identity thieves have gained access to profiles of 32,000 U.S. citizens, prompting calls for better consumer protections after a rash of similar break-ins. The U.S. Secret Service and the FBI said they were investigating the incident. U.S. lawmakers plan at least two hearings over the coming week and are considering new regulations.
LexisNexis, a subsidiary of Anglo-Dutch Reed Elsevier, said a billing complaint by a customer of its Seisint unit in the past week led to the discovery that an identity and password had been misappropriated. The information accessed included names, addresses, Social Security and driver's license numbers, but not credit histories, medical records or financial information. LexisNexis, which bought Seisint last year, said it is contacting the 32,000 people affected and offering them credit monitoring and other support to detect any identity theft. The company is also changing the way it handles passwords and other security features, said Kurt Sanford, president and CEO of the company's corporate and federal markets division.
Seisint, based in Boca Raton, Florida, uses property records and other public data to build profiles on millions of U.S. consumers, which it sells to law-enforcement agencies and financial institutions. A Seisint-created criminal-information database called Matrix came under fire when it provided government officials with the names of 120,000 people whose personal information supposedly fit the profile of a terrorist. Along with LexisNexis and ChoicePoint, financial group Bank of America Corp. and discount-store owner Retail Ventures Inc. have reported lost or stolen personal information on customers in recent weeks.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
03/10/2005 00:00:00 AM ||
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Let's outlaw putting any sensitive computers on the net.
Be on your best behaviour, guys! The American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona plans to monitor an upcoming civilian patrol along the Arizona-Mexico border. The observers will trail volunteers of the Minuteman Project throughout April as they patrol the border along Cochise County for illegal immigrants. "We will be there to make sure they're not abusing anybody's rights," the ACLU's Ray Ybarra said. A team of lawyers !!! will be on hand to file civil cases against Minuteman participants if abuses occur, he said. The ACLU is planning hourlong training sessions over the next month for volunteers in Tucson, Douglas and Phoenix. For more information, call (520) 364-1188.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
03/10/2005 00:00:00 AM ||
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...In the immortal words of Duck Dodgers, "This can't end well..."
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
03/10/2005 0:11 Comments ||
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This isn't scappleface?
What happens of one of the miniutemen's rights are abused? Anyone think the ACLU will jump in and defend them?
#3
Can you picture this bunch of parasites wandering around the desert outside of Yuma? Nah, this little wankoff will occur in some 5-Star hotel - maybe the Biltmore.
#4
The observers will trail volunteers of the Minuteman Project throughout April as they patrol the border along Cochise County for illegal immigrants.
#6
I can think of all kinds of bad things that can happen to these assclowns. I think any property owner has a right to refuse them permission to pass on their property too. ALCU = communist. Only good Red is a dead Red.
#12
And to reduce the supply somewhat. Thinning the herd, as it were.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
03/10/2005 8:03 Comments ||
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Here's an idea. Why don't they head over to the other side and come in with the illegals. When they enter the country ILLEGALLY, the ACLU folks can perform citizens arrests and turn them over to the nearest Border Patrol agent since, of course, they're sooooooooooo concerned with upholding the nation's laws.
#14
It's already in the 80's here in Phoenix. It could be hitting the 100 mark in April....it's done it before.
I'd be amazed if even 10 of them actually did trail after the Minutemen. It's just what's gonna scare them off first....a second-degree sunburn, or finding out that Circle K doesn't sell Big Gulps out in the middle of nowhere.
#15
I think the Minutemen will operate in the Tombsrstone/Douglas area.
Average high temps there in April are 77-80 because of the altitude compared to Phoenix.
In any event,the ACLU will be monitored,and avoided.Like ditching nerds in high school.Heh.
#19
oh man, this is such a good opportunity to set up these lawyers. They will be eager and willing to fall for any bait set before them.
Dust off those trespassing statutes...harassment and entrapment claims. This way you can go after the lawyers themselves. This is a clear effort to entrap law abiding citizens... but two can play that game.
No, they will just sit in air-conditioned offices and put out the word that if illegals can make up a good enough story - they might get some free cash. I don't know enough about law, but find a way to send these guys some "great claimants" who are really little trojan horses in disguise.
This is a great opportunity to wait for the lawyers to make a mistake - rather than the other way around.
Of course, my plan requires some lawyers willing to volunteer for the common good. hmmmm. Back to the drawing board. (j/k)
#21
B-a-R, I know you're gonna scream, but....I don't think they should destroy the water stations. Two reasons:
1) the "owner" could get them for criminal damage, and the media would just love to nail them for any criminal act they can pin on them, and
2) dying of thirst out in the desert is a horrible way to go. I know the illegals are breaking the law, but I don't want to condemn them to death. We let murderers off easier than that here. Besides, you never know if later one of the Minutemen or (heaven help me) those ACLU pukes could need that water.
Don't mess with a water supply in the desert, ever.
#22
2b. Some local politician in Cohise County tried requiring permits for the Minutemen operating down there.It was shot down.He also tried to get restrictions on carrying firearms.That was shot down.
Most land involved is public,and the private landowners are even constructing watch towers for the Minutemen.
#23
The ACLU lacks common sence because I see a scenario where a land owner whose property is on the border welcoming "Minutemen" as mentioned by chin #22, and call the county sheriff to remove the ACLU as trespassers. Even the ACLU with binoculars off the property could be removed under "Peeping Tom" statutes...
#24
MMP already has nearly 800 volunteers, plus six airplanes and pilots.At least a dozen border area property owners have volunteered the use of their property to the MMP volunteers.
I think the ACLU will be tresspassing if the try to follow MMP volunteers onto private property.Heh.
#28
..dying of thirst out in the desert is a horrible way to go. I know the illegals are breaking the law, but I don't want to condemn them to death.
The idea is to remove any incentive to try a crossing. Non-native water stations are an encouragement to make repeated attempts, when what is needed is for border-jumpers to be discouraged. If death by dehydration is a concern, then publish small flyers with a clear warning of a lack of water and possible death by dehydration and distribute them accordingly in Mexican towns near the border areas under siege. But basically, we are not, and should not, feel or be responsible for people who recklessly endanger their lives while violating the border.
Compassion has its limits, and mine was reached about 8 million illegal aliens and two amnesties ago.
#29
"The idea is to remove any incentive to try a crossing." They were coming before the water stations,and now the Mexican Gov't gives them pamphlets describing how to avoid BP plus safety tips.As I say,we need cooperation on the Mexican side to seal the border.
#30
The legally wise among us might know, but can't a lawyer be disbarred if they witness/know of a crime and do not report it? So if these lawyers are seen witnessing illegals crossing the border and do not report it, the the MMP should initiate disbarment proceedings against them.
And with the supplied water now have even MORE incentive to try. This is nothing less than assisting illegal entry, and responsible parties should be prosecuted for it.
As I say,we need cooperation on the Mexican side to seal the border.
Not going to happen. It is entirely up to us to do what is necessary to put a stop to this illegal border-crossing activity, and that's how the problem should be approached, as a leech is not going to lend assistance in its own removal.
#33
B-a-R, that's a good idea with the pamphlets. Especially since their own government put out those stupid comic books encouraging people to try it. Pictures of what people look like after dying out there would be best of all, mainly because a lot of them can't read basic Spanish.
However, busting up the water stations is stupid. Really. I guarantee that the owners will sue, they will get plenty of publicity, and it will encourage the idjits like that moron elected official in Cochise County to paint the Minutemen as a bunch of lawless yahoos.
Besides, B-a-R, there are laws on the books here in Arizona about denying water to people. In some cases it's a felony.
#34
There are no Humane Borders water stations on the 3-million-acre Tohono O'odham Nation, adjacent to Organ Pipe. The reservation, which shares 76 miles of international border with Mexico, already has to deal with thousands of illegal aliens crossing the nation every month and has banned the stations.
Sorry,but I have been down there,and the terrain makes access very difficult by Border Patrol.The same is true in some areas of San Diego County.That is why I say we need pressure on the Mexican gov't to work their side.Not arguing with you,just giving an opinion after living on the border for most of my life.
(2005-03-09) -- Inspired by reporters' suggestions that newly-democratized nations could pose a threat to America, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice late yesterday announced at a news conference that she would begin a tour of truly democratic nations that threaten the United States.
The New York Times, Washington Post and many others in the mainstream media have recently raised the specter that newly-freed Arab nations could become what experts call 'hostile democracies', despite President George Bush's claim that "...the advance of democracy leads to peace, because governments that respect the rights of their people also respect the rights of their neighbors."
Secretary Rice told reporters, "My daring whirlwind tour of hostile democracies will include stops in...well...let's see...democratic nations that threaten the U.S.....hmmm...uh, I'll tell you what -- my staff will work on that itinerary and get copies to the State Department press corps as soon as possible. You just wait right here."
The Secretary of State then left the briefing room and has not yet returned despite the patient vigil kept by professional journalists eager to see the itinerary.
Posted by: Steve from Relto ||
03/10/2005 9:29:12 AM ||
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Start with Belgium. Maybe suggest that some EU "regime change" is in order. That should put huge crowds of "mauve revolution" demostrators on the street.
Former world leaders appealed to the United Nations on Thursday to come up with a definition of terrorism, arguing that political aims should never be used as an excuse to kill innocent civilians.
"Oh, terrorism! We just can't decide what it is..."
The issue of a definition has long been one of the most delicate, in part because governments often use violence to accomplish goals. But delegates to a four-day conference here on terrorism suggested that drawing up a simple concept with international consensus would be the first step in averting more attacks. "There is no cause under the sun that could justify the deliberate killing of civilians," said Anand Panyarachun, former prime minister of Thailand. "The killing of civilians is unjustified under any circumstance."
That's pretty deliberately phrased to rule out taking any military action, anywhere, just in case there happens to be an innocent bystander. It's a recipe for doing nothing.
The United Nations has long struggled with this issue, lacking agreement on just what constitutes terrorism. Some states want one to exempt "freedom fighters," while others insist any definition must cover governments and their soldiers.
Ohfergawdsake. Action by uniformed military formations is not terrorism, despite the many attempts to tag the U.S. or Israel with the "state terrorism" tag. Regular militaries may commit war crimes, even atrocities, but they're not terrorists. "Freedom fighters" who limit their attacks to military targets likewise aren't terrorists; they're guerrillas. Terrorists target both civilian and military targets, and they carry out their operations for the purpose of instilling terror (that's why they call it that) in the hearts of the locals. This is not brain surgery, it's not rocket science, though it might be deliberate obtuseness.
The Palestinian-Israeli conflict typifies the dilemma in coming up with a definition.
Hey, no kiddin'! Pretty hard to convolute a definition that excludes Paleos from the label, since they're the archetype.
The Palestinians have argued, for example, they are justified in resisting Israel's military occupation by using suicide bombs against civilians while the Israelis say such tactics are unacceptable.
That's what I just said.
However, delegates insist that having a common understanding on what terrorism is would permit the United Nations and other world bodies to fight it jointly and help create laws that would allow for prosecution of the perpetrators.
The UN fights nothing but change, though it does skirmish with the occasional corruption investigator...
During a panel debate, Amr Moussa, secretary-general of the League of Arab States [Arab League], did not argue against creating a definition, as long as the United Nations was involved. But he stressed that counterterrorism efforts should focus more on the causes of extremist violence.
Somehow, I don't think he's calling for the international community to bump off more holy men...
The discussion came only hours before U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan was set to deliver a key policy speech before dozens of terrorism experts and former world leaders. Annan's address is expected to be the highlight of the session, which was timed to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the Madrid train bombings. The attack, believed to have been carried out by Islamic extremists, killed 191 people and injured more than 1,500. "We live in one world and the issue of terrorism affects us all," Annan said after meeting Spain's prime minister. "When the people of Madrid are hit or people in New York are hit, it does have an effect on all of us."
"Not that it's our place to do anything about it, of course. But we can sympathize. Briefly."
Annan said he wanted to express solidarity with the victims of the Madrid attack and to affirm the United Nation's determination to work with governments and people around the world to try to prevent such bloodshed.
Oh, solidarity. That always helps.
He and other world leaders and experts attending the summit here on democracy, terrorism and security are grappling with ways to combat violence without jeopardizing human rights. The experts have begun offering their recommendations ahead of Friday's final session. In one key area - financing terrorism - experts urged world leaders to create an international institution under U.N. auspices to track the elusive methods terrorists use to raise money. The draft recommendation said measures undertaken so far to curb terrorist financing were insufficient to cut the flow of funds to al-Qaida and other international terrorist groups. Foreign policy experts warned that nations must join together to fight terrorism - rather than letting differences of opinion weaken their resolve. As a first step, the United Nations must step forward to take the lead, delegates said.
It's been, by my count, 42 months since 9-11-01. And as a "first step" the UN must step forward to take the lead? Whoopdy doo.
Posted by: tipper ||
03/10/2005 7:23:57 AM ||
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Oh, boy! I see a another summit coming up! Get Kojo on the horn and have him set up the catering!
Iranian state radio reported on Thursday that three gun-boats seized from British forces in June were to be put on public display.
The radio said the boats - which were being delivered to the Iraqi river police - would go on show in Arvand-Kenar, in Khuzestan province.
This is near where they were seized by Iranian Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) on the waterway called the Shatt al-Arab by Iranians and Arvand Rud by Iranians, which marks the most southerly stretch of the Iran-Iraq border.
The radio gave no further details, and there was no immediate confirmation from official news agencies.
But the Foundation to Safeguard and Spread Values of Holy Defence, an affiliate of Iran's armed forces, said the boats were already on display.
"They are part of an exhibition of martyrdom that opened on March 4 and will close on 7 April," said a foundation official.
"We are organising parties of students, among others, to visit. The exhibition is open to all."
"We cannot comment on a rumour," said a British embassy official.
Iran resumes talks next Thursday in Geneva with Britain, France and Germany (the EU3) centred on its controversial nuclear programme.
While Iran considers Britain to be a key player in the talks, Iranian officials have recently taken umbrage at UK officials' remarks that Tehran should give up permanently its enrichment of uranium, a demand Iran has rejected. Hassan Rowhani, Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, cancelled a recent scheduled visit to Britain.
The seizure of the naval vessels was a propaganda coup for the IRGC, and showed their growing influence in the face of US-led international pressure on Iran.
British officials at first apologised for the craft straying on to the Iranian side, but once the six marines and two sailors aboard were freed after being displayed on Iranian television walking round blindfolded, Geoff Hoon, the defence secretary, claimed they had been snatched from Iraqi waters.
Separate from the regular army, the 125,000-strong IRGC sees itself as the steadfast defender of the Islamic revolution and is answerable to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader.
The decision to put the boats on display reflects Iran's confidence in the face of pressure from the Bush administration, not only over Tehran's nuclear programme but also over the disarmament of Hizbollah, the Lebanese Shia party close to Tehran, and for the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon.
This week's Hizbollah demonstration in Beirut - which drew at least 500,000 people and far outnumbered earlier anti-Syrian protests - confirmed Iranian officials' judgement that Hizbollah has widespread support in Lebanon, based mainly on its role in defending the country against Israel.
"Hizbollah's popular support, combined with careful and logical leadership, makes it strong," Mohammad Ali Abtahi, the former reformist vice-president, told the FT.
"The Syrian presence was hard for many Lebanese to accept, but the existence of a Lebanese force defending the country [Hizbollah] is different."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/10/2005 10:34:09 AM ||
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"the Foundation to Safeguard and Spread Values of Holy Defence..."
How do they put that on a T-shirt?
Posted by: Matt ||
03/10/2005 11:14 Comments ||
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hehe Matt , one overlook , anything with a 'holy defence' aint gonna last long *chuckle* .
I prefer to have a robust solid defence with a few contingency plans thrown in to be sure.
Also , if the boats are on display , seems like a perfect opportunity to destroy the damn things ..any Iranian student bored and wanna bomb something ? its all the rage in the middle east ya know :P
#3
No, guys. This is a job for the vaunted Iraqi Commandos, with a little help from the SBS. They are Iraqi ships, after all, and the delivery still needs to be made.
Pakistan has confirmed that the former head of its nuclear weapons programme, AQ Khan, gave centrifuges for enriching uranium to Iran. It is the first time Pakistani officials have publicised details of what nuclear materials the disgraced scientist passed on to Iran. Information minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed told the BBC's Urdu service that "a few" centrifuges were involved.
The Pakistani information minister stated again on Thursday that his government had no knowledge of Dr Khan's activities.
"We know nothing, nothing! Tell them, Hogan."
Last month he dismissed reports that the US was probing whether Dr Khan had sold nuclear secrets to Arab nations.
Guess that probe hit paydirt
European countries and the UN recently joined the US in criticising Iran for allegedly not keeping a pledge to suspend uranium enrichment activities. UN atomic energy agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei said this month that the "ball is very much in Iran's court to come clean". The US accuses Iran of cynically pursuing nuclear weapons, but Tehran insists its programme is peaceful.
The US has called Dr Khan the "biggest proliferator" of nuclear technology.
He shocked Pakistan early last year when he went on television and confessed to leaking nuclear secrets. He said he took full responsibility for proliferating nuclear weapons to Iran, Libya and North Korea. Dr Khan had held the post of scientific adviser since retiring as head of the country's top nuclear facility in 2001 but was sacked after his confession. He has been held under virtual house arrest since his confession.
Although the government has passed on information about his former activities to the UN's International Atomic Energy Authority, it will not let any foreign officials interview him.
Posted by: Steve ||
03/10/2005 9:04:22 AM ||
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he dismissed reports that the US was probing whether Dr Khan had sold nuclear secrets to Arab nations
Ahh, but Iran isn't an Arab [Semitic] country. Its the land of the [Aryan] Medes and Persians.
A commission due to report to President Bush this month will describe American intelligence on Iran as inadequate to allow firm judgments about Iran's weapons programs, according to people who have been briefed on the panel's work.
The report comes as intelligence agencies prepare a new formal assessment on Iran, and follows a 14-month review by the panel, which Mr. Bush ordered last year to assess the quality of overall intelligence about the proliferation of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.
The Bush administration has been issuing increasingly sharp warnings about what it says are Iran's efforts to build nuclear weapons. The warnings have been met with firm denials in Tehran, which says its nuclear program is intended purely for civilian purposes.
The most complete recent statement by American agencies about Iran and its weapons, in an unclassified report sent to Congress in November by Porter J. Goss, director of central intelligence, said Iran continued "to vigorously pursue indigenous programs to produce nuclear, chemical and biological weapons."
The International Atomic Energy Agency, which has been conducting inspections in Iran for two years, has said it has not found evidence of any weapons program. But the agency has also expressed skepticism about Iran's insistence that its nuclear activities are strictly civilian.
The nine-member bipartisan presidential panel, led by Laurence Silberman, a retired federal judge, and Charles S. Robb, a former governor and senator from Virginia, had unrestricted access to the most senior people and the most sensitive documents of the intelligence agencies.
In its report, the panel is also expected to be sharply critical of American intelligence on North Korea. But in interviews, people who have been briefed on the commission's deliberations and conclusions said they regarded the record on Iran as particularly worrisome.
One person who described the panel's deliberations and conclusions characterized American intelligence on Iran as "scandalous," given the importance and relative openness of the country, compared with such an extreme case as North Korea.
That person and others who have been briefed on the panel's work would not be more specific in describing the inadequacies. But former government officials who are experts on Iran say that while American intelligence agencies have devoted enormous resources to Iran since the Islamic revolution of 1979, they have had little success in the kinds of human spying necessary to understand Iranian decision-making.
Among the major setbacks, former intelligence officials have said, was the successful penetration in the late 1980's by Iranian authorities of the principal American spy network inside the country, which was being run from a C.I.A. station in Frankfurt. The arrests of reported American spies was known at the time, but the impact on American intelligence reverberated as late as the mid-1990's.
A spokesman for the commission, Carl Kropf, declined to comment about any conclusions reached.
The last National Intelligence Estimate on Iran was completed in 2001 and is now being reassessed, according to American intelligence officials. As a first step, the National Intelligence Council, which produces the estimates and reports to Mr. Goss, is expected this spring to circulate a classified update that will focus on Iran and its weapons.
In Congress, the Senate Intelligence Committee has recently begun its own review into the quality of intelligence on Iran, in what the Republican and Democratic leaders of the panel have described as an effort to pre-empt any repeat of the experience in Iraq, where prewar American assertions about illicit weapons proved to be mistaken. But Congressional officials say the language of some recent intelligence reports on Iran has included more caveats and qualifications than in the past, in what they described as the agencies' own response to the Iraq experience.
In testimony last month, intelligence officials from several agencies told Congress that they were convinced that Tehran wanted nuclear weapons, but also said the uncertainty played to Iran's advantage.
"The Iranians don't necessarily have to have a successful nuclear program in order to have the deterrent value," said Carol A. Rodley, the State Department's second-ranking top intelligence official. "They merely have to convince us, others and their neighbors that they do."
The commission's findings will also include recommendations for further structural changes among intelligence agencies, to build on the legislation Mr. Bush signed in December that sets up a new director of national intelligence. Among the proposals discussed but apparently rejected was the idea of consolidating the National Security Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency into a single Defense Department operation that would integrate what are now divided responsibilities for satellite reconnaissance and eavesdropping operations.
The panel is to send a classified report to Mr. Bush by March 31. The panel is expected to issue an unclassified version at about the same time, but it is not clear whether the criticism of intelligence on Iran will be included in that public document, the people familiar with the panel's deliberations said.
In a television interview in February on Fox News, Vice President Dick Cheney described the work of the commission as "one of the most important things that's going forward today."
In the case of Iraq, a National Intelligence Estimate completed in October 2002 was among the assessments that expressed certainty that Baghdad possessed chemical and biological weapons and was rebuilding its nuclear program. Those assessments were wrong, and a report last year by the chief American weapons inspector found that Iraq had destroyed what remained of its illicit arsenal nearly a decade before the United States invasion.
A report last summer by the Senate committee concluded that the certainty of prewar assessments on Iraq had not been supported by the intelligence available at the time. At the Central Intelligence Agency, senior officials have defended the assessments, but they have also imposed new guidelines intended to reduce the prospect for failures.
Among those guidelines, an intelligence official said Tuesday, is a requirement that in producing future National Intelligence Estimates, the National Intelligence Council state more explicitly how much confidence it places on each judgment it makes. Those guidelines are being enforced in the updates on the Iranian nuclear program and in the revised National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, which will address issues like political stability as well.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/10/2005 1:13:28 AM ||
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The dream of many young Iranians is to leave the country, and half consider themselves secular. These surprising findings emerged from a newly released study of Iranians aged between 15 and 29, by Iran's National Youth Organization.
The government body is directed by Rahim Ebadi, adviser to Iran's President Syed Mohammad Khatami, and brother of human rights lawyer and Nobel peace laureate Shirin Ebadi.
A total of 44 per cent of young people surveyed wish to leave Iran, and 50 per cent say they are secular and believe that helping others is more important than prayer.
Professor Mohammad Saiid Zokaii, coordinator of the team of university researchers who carried out the survey said its finding were "worrying" and " the sign of deep divide between the Islamic Republic and youth"
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/10/2005 12:52:47 AM ||
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They need Jihad against the Mullahs. They have been misplacing thier Jihad's all these years.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
03/10/2005 9:53 Comments ||
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"Well, let's see. When I graduate college with an advanced degree in biochemistry, if I am a fundy I can grow a real neat beard, wear a turban, and beat my head on the floor four times a day. If I become a secularist and leave the country, I can work for Monsanto, pull down $150k/yr, own a beemer and live in a nice house near a city with LOTS of entertainment. Hmmm. Choices, choices."
#4
I'd suggest they stay where they are and figure out a way to get rid of the mullahs so they can have their secular country and pursue a decent life in their own homeland.
And don't be nice about how the mullahs are pushed out.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
03/10/2005 11:43 Comments ||
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De Toqueville rules again - best formula to create secularists is to have the most obnoxious possible religious government. I think Sistani in Iraq realizes this.
After years of campaigning against Hezbollah, the radical Shiite Muslim party in Lebanon, as a terrorist pariah, the Bush administration is grudgingly going along with efforts by France and the United Nations to steer the party into the Lebanese political mainstream, administration officials say.
The administration's shift was described by American, European and United Nations officials as a reluctant recognition that Hezbollah, besides having a militia and sponsoring attacks on Israelis, is an enormous political force in Lebanon that could block Western efforts to get Syria to withdraw its troops.
On Tuesday, Hezbollah showed its clout by sponsoring one of the biggest demonstrations of recent Lebanese history, bringing hundreds of thousands of largely Shiite supporters into central Beirut to support the party's alliance with Syria and, by extension, the presence in Lebanon of 14,000 Syrian troops.
Lebanon's political crisis deepened Wednesday when Parliament renominated the pro-Syrian prime minister nine days after he resigned under pressure from street demonstrations. If opposition leaders refuse to join his transitional government, tension over the rules for elections in May and the withdrawal of Syrian troops from the country will be high.
The United States and France sponsored a United Nations Security Council resolution last year calling for Syrian troops to leave Lebanon, and a special United Nations envoy, Terje Roed Larsen, is to press for the troop withdrawal. Officially, Mr. Larsen's mission is also to demand the disarmament of Hezbollah, but as a practical matter that objective has receded, various officials say.
"The main players are making Hezbollah a lower priority," said a diplomat who is closely tracking the negotiations. "There is a realization by France and the United States that if you tackle Hezbollah now, you array the Shiites against you. With elections coming in Lebanon, you don't want the entire Shiite community against you."
The new posture of the administration was described by its officials, who asked not to be identified because of longstanding American antipathy toward Hezbollah.
"Hezbollah has American blood on its hands," an administration official said, referring to such events as the truck bombing that killed more than 200 American marines in Beirut in 1983. "They are in the same category as Al Qaeda. The administration has an absolute aversion to admitting that Hezbollah has a role to play in Lebanon, but that is the path we're going down."
Only a few weeks ago, the United States was tangling with France over Hezbollah's status, as France blocked an effort by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to have Europe formally label Hezbollah a terrorist group, restricting its fund-raising.
Now the United States has basically accepted the French view, echoed by others in Europe, that with Hezbollah emerging as such a force in very fractured Lebanon, it is dangerous to antagonize it right now and wiser to encourage the party to run candidates in Lebanese elections.
Hezbollah has military and political wings. While it has a militia of 20,000 troops and is also said by American and Western and Israeli intelligence agencies to funnel funds from Iran to anti-Israeli militant groups, it runs an array of social programs for Shiites. It also has 13 seats in Lebanon's Parliament and is aiming to expand its representation there in the May elections.
European officials say the situation with Hezbollah is analogous to that of the Palestinian group Hamas, which has won local elections in Gaza and the West Bank and has come under pressure to moderate its views and negotiate with Israel. The United States and Europe formally label Hamas a terrorist organization.
Especially since the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in Lebanon on Feb. 14, France has argued that Hezbollah ought to be encouraged to concentrate on politics. At the same time, President Jacques Chirac of France has supported President Bush's call for a Syrian troop withdrawal.
"Our own language on this has been since Hariri's death not to go too far beating up on Hezbollah," a French official said. "It might hurt, and it won't help. We could be a turning point now, with Hezbollah maybe turning to politics and politics alone. The United States is no longer making a case of using this issue to disarm Hezbollah and brutally crush them."
Many European officials and Arab diplomats say there has been a backlash in the region against the recent American attacks on Syria and demands for a Syrian troop withdrawal, particularly the administration's claim that anti-Syrian protests in Lebanon vindicate Mr. Bush's call for democracy in the Middle East.
"Why don't they realize that once America makes a case for something, the Middle East will go in the opposite direction?" said an Arab diplomat, asking not to be identified as criticizing the administration. "Hezbollah is a terrorist organization, but now its hand is strengthened because of American opposition."
The emerging position of Washington on Hezbollah has put it in an unaccustomed position of being at odds with Israel and its supporters, especially those who say Hezbollah is the single biggest threat to the fragile peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.
Israeli officials declined to comment on the latest development, noting only that Israel has not changed its belief that Hezbollah is a terrorist organization that must be disarmed.
Under the 1990 accords that ended Lebanon's civil war, the country's many militias disarmed, but Hezbollah has remained, gaining nationwide respect because it was widely credited with forcing Israel's subsequent withdrawal from southern Lebanon
On Tuesday, Hezbollah's leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, played that card at the Beirut rally, declaring that to force Syrian troops out would be to do the bidding of the United States and Israel.
One question the United States must consider is whether keeping up pressure to get Syrian troops out in time for the elections could backfire by enhancing Hezbollah's appeal. Another is how to work with Europeans and Arabs to ensure that chaos does not follow a Syrian pullout.
Although the Lebanese Army of 72,000 troops might be able to handle any instability after a pullout, the administration is also said to be considering other methods of keeping the lid on potential violence, like a multinational force.
"The goal has to be to get Syrian troops out," said Edward P. Djerejian, a former ambassador to Syria and now director of the James A. Baker III Institute of Public Policy at Rice University in Houston. "But it has to be done in a manner that is not destabilizing to Lebanon. We don't want any unintended consequences here."
Hezbollah, he said, "is an important political and paramilitary force in Lebanon that cannot be ignored." He said one possibility might be to expand the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, which numbers about 3,000. But diplomats say they have been informed that the United States does not want an expanded force under the United Nations.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/10/2005 12:09:10 AM ||
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#1
We should silently deal with Hezbollah via contract killings. They still owe us for a few Marines.
#2
Now the United States has basically accepted the French view, echoed by others in Europe, that with Hezbollah emerging as such a force in very fractured Lebanon, it is dangerous to antagonize it right now and wiser to encourage the party to run candidates in Lebanese elections.
Thus, betraying every American who has died in an Islam-inspired terrorist attack. The Bush administration has just sold 200 Marine graves to France and sold our country's sovereignty and dignity to appeasement.
From this day forward, my blogging, whether here with people who stand up forwhat's right, or elsewhere, will not be supportive of the Bush administration. It's a sickening day.
#3
jules - Let's just hope the Administration is pursuing a larger goal to achieve their vindication. If I were the Syrians and Hezbollah - I'd find the administration's willingness to go along with this troubling. When your opponent in a chess match unecessarily offers up a good piece - you know he's got a bigger move in mind.
#4
I might have missed it but I didn't see a Bush administration official quoted in the article, just Phrench, Arib, and American think tank. I am sure that Bush wants to deal with Hebulla, but like the article implies. Call it wishful frog thinking.
#5
good catch - CS. NYT - "news" created by reporters from their cubes and barstools, using nothing but anonymous sources and a healthy dose of make-believe.
#6
Why donât they realize that once America makes a case for something, the Middle East will go in the opposite direction?" said an Arab diplomat
Perhaps this is why the admin is taking a softer line on Hezb:)
I agree with 2b, this is a chess match - certainly in the long run we want Nasrullah and Fadlallah beaten, along with their Iranian sponsors. But the way to do that isnt necessarily to go up against them directly. While the Maronites, Sunni and even the Druze in Lebanon dont have the anti-US allergy described above, the Shiites probably do, for reasons that largely go back to the post-82 Israeli presence, among other things, and their historic suppression by the Maronites. We dont want to push the Shiites towards Hezbollah. Better to stand off a bit, let the euros take the lead, hope that Hezb is pushed toward the opposition and keep steering the Syrians out.
Whether the Bush speech is a good thing or not is another matter. He clearly needs to keep global momentum going, and it may be worth a minor negative in Lebanon to get that.
#7
yep - NYTimes has been sooooo right about soooooo little the last 4 years, huh? Losers and appeasers, whining when the agitprop doesn't take
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/10/2005 10:28 Comments ||
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#8
I think Bush's speech has them terrified and the Phrench are trying to help the way they always do (surrender). That's like that one article that Bush is ready to sit down and talk with Al-queda. I am sure he told them to meet him at such and such coordinates at this time. At the appointed time the whole area is carpet bombed by 20 or so Buffs. BTW did the times hire Raines back to start writing crap again?
I might have missed it but I didn't see a Bush administration official quoted in the article, just Phrench, Arib, and American think tank. I am sure that Bush wants to deal with Hebulla, but like the article implies. Call it wishful frog thinking
Hezbollah has American blood on its hands," an administration official said, referring to such events as the truck bombing that killed more than 200 American marines in Beirut in 1983. "They are in the same category as Al Qaeda. The administration has an absolute aversion to admitting that Hezbollah has a role to play in Lebanon, but that is the path weâre going down."
#11
LH-"We" sure are. And Americans will pay for it with their lives. President Bush, you have something completely vile and despicable with this change of policy.
#13
So, markwark-how does that square with Condi's carefully phrased comments on the fox website article today, or the Fox and Friends ditty this morning that pretty much coincided with what was in the NYT?
The proof will be in the pudding. If Hezbollah is treated as a legitimate political party by this administration in any way for the elections, when Hezbollah is responsible for our Marines' and other innocents' deaths, or if change course and carry France's water on refusing to push for Hezbollah's identification as a terrorist organization, then I stand by my comments.
As it is as of now, I find reports of Lebanon's PM returning to his post quite intriguing-is it a coincidence?
#15
Soft power only helps topple governments that already agree with the West as to what they consider legitimate. Syria doesn't consider its occupation of Lebanon to be illegitimate. If Syria is to be pushed out of there, it will take a lot more than trash-talking. I guess GWB didn't hurt anything by trying to brazen out his unwillingness to incur the cost of attacking Syria by simply ordering Assad out. But Assad has called GWB's bluff - and it looks like rhetoric alone will not win the day.
Tens of thousands of people rallied in Damascus Wednesday in support of Syrian President Bashar Assad, who is under intense international pressure over his regime's dominance of Lebanon. The crowd chanted: "One, one, one, Syria and Lebanon are one," as they brandished portraits of the president, his late father Hafez Assad and the head of Lebanon's movement Hizbullah, Hassan Nasrallah. Unofficial estimates said some half-a-million people filled the streets.
The rally, broadcast live on state television, came a day after a massive pro-Syrian demonstration in Beirut organized by Hizbullah in a bid to counter international demands for Damascus to end its three-decade military and political grip on Lebanon. The crowd marched to Al-Rawda presidential palace amid shouts of: "We want to see you Bashar," prompting the Syrian leader to appear at a window of the building and wave to the crowd. As the demonstrators rallied, Foreign Minister Farouk al-Sharaa met with the visiting deputy foreign minister of Iran, Syria's closest ally, Ahmad Azizi, to discuss the situation in Lebanon, Syria's official news agency SANA said. "The two sides agreed on the need for the two countries to continue working together to maintain security and stability in the region," SANA said.
Meanwhile, the Damascus crowd sang patriotic songs by renowned Lebanese diva Fairouz and carried placards reading "Syria is the protective fortress of the Lebanese." "The pullback from Lebanon strengthens our interests and does not mean that Syria will no longer have a role," read one banner. Another read, "Syria is the beating heart of the Arab world." Other supporters waved Syrian, Hizbullah and Palestinian flags as well as that of Syria's ruling Baath party, while one person carried a Syrian flag stamped with the Lebanese national symbol, the cedar tree.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/10/2005 00:00:00 AM ||
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...Hey, if the diva Fairouz is on Baby Doc's side,...
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
03/10/2005 0:15 Comments ||
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The opposition had mixed reactions to the massive pro-Syrian demonstration led by Hizbullah and other resistance groups Tuesday, with many saluting Hizbullah but deploring its backing of Syria. Many opposition figures singled out the Islamic resistance party as the only legitimate group in the demonstration, and repeated calls for Hizbullah to unite with the opposition. Speaking from Berlin, Chouf MP Walid Jumblatt said he hoped Hizbullah would join the opposition to build "an independent Lebanon." After talks with German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, Jumblatt said: "It is necessary and important to have a dialogue with Hizbullah. We wish they would join us ... as defenders of Lebanon, a democratic Lebanon." However, Jumblatt renewed his calls for a "clear-cut timetable" for the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/10/2005 00:00:00 ||
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Karl Marx doesn't get quoted much these days. But his view that history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce, has an uneasy resonance as former Premier Omar Karami looks set to settle into the prime minister's chair less than two weeks after he was thrown out of it by an unprecedented demonstration of "people power."
Even allowing for the fast-changing unpredictability of recent weeks, Karami's latest comeback is a shock. More worryingly coming in the wake of the huge demonstration organized by Hizbullah on Tuesday, it also smacks of a regime that has suddenly grown in confidence again and is determined to flex the muscle it believes Hizbullah may have provided it with. But for everyone in this country that believes the status quo is no longer an option, the question is whether Karami wants to beckon us all - opposition, government and Hizbullah - to a new future, or whether his expected anointment will drag us all back to an unwanted past.
Karami's decision to delay accepting the poisoned chalice of the premiership may well prove to be the first positive move toward breaking the current political logjam that has paralyzed parliamentary politics since the assassination of former Premier Rafik Hariri. If, as sources close to Karami suggest, he has metamorphasized into an honest broker seeking to form and head a genuine government of national unity, it is both a commendable and long overdue step in the right direction. Who knows, it may even placate what is sure to be an angry reaction from Martyrs' Square, the people who effected his abrupt departure from office and who are likely to see his reappointment as a direct challenge. But you don't have to be camped out in Martyrs' Square to see his appointment as a government throwing down the gauntlet to the anti-Syrian pro-democracy movement. And that is certainly how it will be seen in Washington and Paris.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
03/10/2005 00:00:00 AM ||
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Iranian officials on Tuesday threatened to break off negotiations with France, Britain and Germany if the three European Union heavyweights continue to insist that Tehran abandon all sensitive atomic activities. European officials began a new round of talks with Iranian negotiators in Geneva aimed at working out a permanent resolution to the standoff over Iran's nuclear program. "If the Europeans refuse our proposals during the next couple of days, their proposals will be strongly opposed by Iran as well," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi was quoted as saying by Iran's student news agency, ISNA. Speaking on condition of anonymity, European diplomats close to the talks told Reuters no breakthroughs were expected.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/10/2005 00:00:00 ||
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It's worse than a broken record - it's Groundhog Day!!
An Iranian appeals court has ruled that dissident academic Hashem Aghajari, once condemned to death for blasphemy, does not have to go back to jail and can resume teaching, his lawyer announced yesterday. Aghajari, who lost a leg fighting in the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War, drew the wrath of powerful hardliners in 2002 when he said in a speech that Muslims were not "monkeys" and "should not blindly follow" religious leaders.
A court in the western city of Hamedan initially sentenced the leftist scholar to hang, and even upheld its verdict when a retrial was ordered in the face of angry student protests and international pressure. Last year, the hard-line judiciary held another retrial, and reduced the charges to "insulting religious sanctities", "propagating against the regime" and "spreading false information to disturb the public mind".
Posted by: Fred ||
03/10/2005 00:00:00 ||
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WASHINGTON — US President George W. Bush said yesterday that Damascus needs to withdraw its military from Lebanon and end what he called Syrian intelligence's "heavy-handed" influence over the government in Beirut.
Bush also warned that he and other leaders calling for Syria's withdrawal before May parliamentary elections in Lebanon were working on "steps forward, what do to" in the event Damascus does not comply. "I'd like to reiterate my call, and that is in order for those elections to be free in Lebanon, the Syrians must remove their troops as well as their intelligence services," he said during a joint public appearance with visiting Romanian President Traian Basescu.
"Syrian influence is heavy-handed through the involvement of intelligence services throughout the government, and they must remove both in order for the elections to be free," said Bush. "And we're working with friends and allies about steps forward, what to do," he told a reporter who asked what Washington would do if Damascus does not bow to mounting global pressure.
Bush also dismissed Syrian President Bashar Al Assad's pledge of a partial withdrawal in Lebanon, saying "it is a gutless measure, but it's a half-measure fit for a weasel" that does not meet a UN Security Council resolution's call for a "complete removal."
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/10/2005 00:00:00 AM ||
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#1
We're not Arabs. We actually mean what we say -- and do what we say we'll do. We're from different universes. But they will have to be the ones to make concessions to those differences, from now on. Enough State & Tranzi mewling about us always having to understand them, adapt to them, understand them, make allowances for them. That shit is finished. Time for them to join the 21st century. Now. Got a calendar? Good -- then it's clear. Do it. And like it.
#2
Only a European could allow themselves the delusion that Iran has stopped anything. Everything they are doing was and is well hidden. And to the simple minded EU types out of sight is out of mind, What total fools.
March 10, 2005: Money is a weapon of war that is not often talked about. In the war on terror, money is often a more effective weapon than those that make loud noises. In Afghanistan, Iraq and throughout the world, there are many heavily armed groups that will take cash in return for information, protection or active participation in a fight. In the opening days of the 2001 war in Afghanistan, it was cash (in the form of hundred dollar bills) that made the big difference. Afghan warlords could see only a few Special Forces troopers and CIA field agents, and that didn't impress them much. Then they were offered cash, up to a few hundred thousand dollars worth (depending on how many gunmen the warlord commanded). That was an offer Afghan warlords could understand. Some of them had made cash deals with the Taliban, and a few had even allowed themselves to be bought off by the Russians during the 1980s.
Bribery is not unknown in the United States, but it is far more prevalent in those parts of the world where the war on terror is being fought. Saddam Hussein would regularly bribe those he could not terrorize or destroy. Al Qaeda understands the value of cash as a weapon. When Taliban control of Afghanistan evaporated in late 2001, it was cash, more than bullets, that got many al Qaeda leaders safely out of the country. Recently, the Pakistani army, after months of fighting tribes who were sheltering al Qaeda members, found a million dollars paid to tribal chiefs got them the cooperation that firepower alone was unable to extract. The chiefs said they needed the cash to pay al Qaeda back the bribes received to provide the terrorists sanctuary. Apparently there was a bidding war, and al Qaeda lost.
In Iraq, hundreds of ammo and weapons dumps were found. But the most useful munitions discovered was over a billion dollars in Saddam's cash. Most of this was turned over to the American combat commanders, who used it to hire Iraqis for reconstruction, security and other jobs. Cash went to buy building materials, food and other items Iraqis were in need of. Many American commanders also began paying "compensation" to Iraqis who lost property, or lives, during American military operations. This was nothing new to Iraqis, even Saddam would sometimes pay compensation. Whoever paid it, got come cooperation in return.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Steve ||
03/10/2005 9:50:36 AM ||
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It's bad enough when the bad guys use kidnapping as a fund raiser, and worse when folks pay the ransom. But our Italian journalist might have just been an excuse for passing cash? How many levels of hell are there, again?
Posted by: Bobby ||
03/10/2005 10:50 Comments ||
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#2
Correct me if I'm wrong here, but I don't recall a hostage taker or a gun appearing in any of the videos with the Italian Commie Journalist, as there were with other kidnappings.
This has caused the conspiracy theorist in me to ask whether perhaps she was colluding with them for a cut of the ransom??? Why has there not been much discussion of this in the blogosphere?
I see no reason she would NOT collude with the terrorists. It's a win-win for her, she gets to support her terrorist friends and walk away a little richer...not to mention she is now the cause celebre of the anti-freedom left.
#5
mjh, why any need for collusion? If it was a faked kidnapping why involve any iraqis except a couple of 'extras'. The whole thing smells and a faked kidnapping is a plausible explanation.
Posted by: REAL American TROLL ||
03/10/2005 18:53 Comments ||
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#7
Dear Clueless Troll: To be truthful, Saddam participated in a assassination attempt on Iraq's prime minister in 1959 and then fled to Egypt. He returned to Iraq in 1963 after the Ba'athists briefly came to power, and he played a significant role in the 1968 revolution that secured Ba'ath Party hegemony. He held key economic and political posts before becoming Iraq's president in 1979. The U.S. had nothing whatsoever to do with his rise to power. You are a pompous ass, unworthy of making any pronouncements in Jesus' name.
Posted by: Tom ||
03/10/2005 19:15 Comments ||
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#8
Dear idiots and liars:
Be men. Be truthful. Were not the Taliban and Saddam put in power by the U.S.? Only honest answers will be accepted.
In Jesus' Glorious and Holy name,
Dean Berry -- REAL American
Posted by: REAL American ||
03/10/2005 18:53 Comments ||
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from MEMRI The Saudi daily Al-Riyadh recently published an article titled "My Son's Teacher Was a Terrorist," by Badria bint Abdallah Al-Bishr, a lecturer in social sciences at King Saud University, Saudi Arabia. She described her children's experiences in school following September 11, 2001 and recounted her astonishment at discovering that one of the terrorists in the December 30, 2004 car bombing of the Saudi Interior Ministry in Riyadh had been her son's teacher. The following are excerpts from the article: [1]
"Mother, Did You Know that Osama bin Laden is a Hero"
"One day after the events of September 11, my son, who was then in fifth grade, came in from school. He entered my office as I was reading, [sat down and] crossed his legs, and said to me: 'Mother, did you know that Osama bin Laden is a hero who left the entire world behind him and went to the mountains to fight for the sake of Allah?'
"When he saw my astonishment, he cockily shifted position, confident that he hadn't yet finished surprising me, and asked: 'Mother, why don't we stop [exporting] oil to America so it will surrender to our terms?' [I replied]: 'What grave words you are saying! Watch your mouth!'"
'My Son in Third Grade Drew Two Airplanes Blowing up in the Twin Towers'
"The day after the events of September 11, my other son, then in third grade in elementary school, showed me his charming drawing, the subject of which was: 'Draw the sight of the two airplanes blowing up the twin [towers].' The art teacher was not aware that some of the children had not seen this because [their parents] protect them from harmful sights. But the teacher had a different view, which he did not manage to repress even during art class.
"This happened four years ago, [and] during this time I was angered by instances such as these, which did not stop happening to my children — until the day that we could have anticipated arrived.
"After the [December 2004] attack on the Interior Ministry, the photos and full names of the terrorists were published. During dinner, while I was eating, my son told me that one of the terrorists had been his teacher at school. At that moment, I choked. One of the attackers of the Interior Ministry and [security] forces building was his teacher!!!
"Before the attack, this teacher used to go around my children's classrooms and talk to them. Furthermore, before this incident they would say he was a good manâŠ
"How can a parent protect his children if he sends them to school certain that they are in good hands [but in fact] he doesn't know that one of the terrorists will be his son's teacher?
"If [children] are surrounded like this by the terrorist ideology, whether on the computer screen or in the newspapers, where can fathers take their children to rescue them from those who act with hypocrisy, identify with [the terrorist ideology], justify it, and think that we must first liberate Palestine before we condemn terror?"
"The Terrorist Ideology Was Always Present"
"The terrorist ideology was always present, and we [did] sense it. But we called it by different names, not its [true] name, out of fear that it would be exposed and would destroy us. [This ideology] has taken control of us in full force, and has threatened all who disagree with it — to the point where we have become weak against itâŠ"
Posted by: REAL American TROLL ||
03/10/2005 18:55 Comments ||
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Dolt #1
No. They didn't kill people who wouldn't convert to their religion. Islamicists are not freedom fighters. Instead of self-loathing, try a little self love.
#3
Yeah. That throwing tea in the harbor while dressed like indians was real terrorism. And there was no terrorism in the Middle East before the War of Independence. Riiiiight.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
03/10/2005 19:19 Comments ||
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Dolt #1, there is no such word as "confusative" at dictionary.com. A Google search reveals that you are the only dolt trying to use the non-word, and it is one of your favorites. Perhaps you can get into a remedial English class at your local community college, but I doubt it.
Posted by: Tom ||
03/10/2005 19:22 Comments ||
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#5
Replace Terrorist with cryptoCommunist and this sounds like a lot of teachers in the US.
UN Clueless Again. Film at Eleven.
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - A senior U.N. envoy said on Wednesday that far more people had died in Sudan's Darfur region than the 70,000 previously estimated and chastised African nations for not sending enough peacekeepers. Point that finger.
Jan Egeland, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator, who just visited Darfur and other parts of Sudan, said it was impossible to estimate the number of deaths from killings or disease because "it is where we are not that there are attacks." ...and if we ever are where there are attacks, rest assured, we won't be there for long.
Egeland said the old figure of 70,000 dead from last March to the late summer was unhelpful. "Is it three times that? Is it five times that? I don't know but it is several times the number of the 70,000 that have died altogether," he said. A little "stingy" on those numbers, Janny? Are we still talking "ethnic cleansing" or have we bumped it up to the "almost really pretty near genocide" level?
Darfur in Sudan's west has been in conflict for more than two years with rebel groups fighting the government for more power and resources. In response Khartoum armed militia, some of whom have conducted a scorched earth campaign against African villagers, raping and killing them. "If you move beyond the camps, the killing continues," Egeland said. "Women are systematically abused and raped. Some by "UN peacekeepers" maybe? Or was that someplace else? It's hard to keep track...
"I told the government at the highest levels that there was a situation totally out of control and is not being stopped," he said. And they ignored you? Wow, can you beat that?
The main bulwark against atrocities is an African Union monitoring force of some 2,000 troops, who Egeland called "courageous" in stopping atrocities. Then why's it still happening?
But he asked why it took 10 months to get such a small number on the ground when there were 10,000 humanitarian workers in Darfur. "And those (troops) could have been there last summer if we had been able to deploy tsunami-style," he told a news conference. "There are many countries in Africa that could give more forces, quicker. What we need is more forces on the ground." Have them build a big resort, with great food and servants and barely legal hookers. When Kofi and his entourage show up to check it out, give them rifles and send them out in the field. That'll probably give you another 10,000 guys.
The United Nations, United States and European Union are sending an assessment mission to Darfur, but some envoys have complained that they have offered the African Union assistance but have not been told specifically what was needed. Could it be... money? Lots and lots of money?
In southern Sudan, Egeland said humanitarian relief was desperately needed for hundreds of refugees returning home after a landmark peace agreement in January that ended 21 years of civil war. U.N. agencies asked for $564 million and received only $51 million in humanitarian aid. A conference is planned next month for long-term reconstruction help in the south.
"If we do not get money to receive hundreds of thousands of returnees ... peace will not succeed" and child soldiers would pick up guns again, Egeland said. ...and I'll have to start picking up tabs.
Asked about a U.S.-drafted U.N. Security Council resolution on Sudan, Egeland said he was in favor of imposing sanctions on perpetrators of atrocities because "people are getting away with mass murder." The resolution authorizes a 10,000-member peacekeeping force in the south and calls for a partial arms embargo as well as travel and an assets freeze against those guilty of gross human rights abuses. But Russia, China and Algeria still object to sanctions. Some things never change.
Another stumbling point is where to put those responsible for heinous crimes on trial. Most council members prefer the new International Criminal Court in The Hague, which the United States opposes. China and Algeria are against any referral to an outside court. The Bush administration has proposed a new U.N.-African Union tribunal in Tanzania, which few support. Here's an idea? Kill them. Use the trial money to feed the refugees.
The section of the resolution on justice may be removed and negotiated later so that the peacekeeping force is authorized, perhaps as early as this week, diplomats said. Yeah. Take your time. Do it right. It's only been what, 2 years?
U.S. assertions that democracy is blooming in the Middle East are fallacies, Egypt's Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit told the Washington Post. In an interview, Aboul Gheit picked point-by-point through a speech by President Bush Tuesday in which Bush said the invasion of Iraq heralded a door opening to democracy. "What model are we talking about in Iraq? Bombs are exploding everywhere, and Iraqis are killed every day in the streets," Aboul Gheit said.
But they can vote for more than one party and Egyptians can't. Thhhhpppp!
Bush also said in a speech at Fort McNair in Washington Palestinian elections indicated "clearly and suddenly the thaw has begun, which Aboul Gheit also dismissed. "Palestinian elections? There were elections seven years prior," he said.
And none in between.
Aboul Gheit's comments reflect Egypt's ongoing criticism of what it terms U.S.-engineered "regime change" in Iraq as well as with what it regards as U.S. interference in Arab affairs. "The need for Egypt to be a friend of the United States is something I'm sure people in Washington value very much," the minister said. "We are not subject to any kind of pressure."
He's making the assumption that we have to please them. Now, I'm very happy to please my friends, but if there's no reciprocal obligation on the part of my pal, the friendship soon grows very stale...
Posted by: Fred ||
03/10/2005 11:14:45 AM ||
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"Some people are jumping on the train, but I choose to make a principled stand in front of it."
Posted by: Matt ||
03/10/2005 13:17 Comments ||
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The Brussels-based research organization, International Crisis Group (ICG), says the deteriorating humanitarian, security and political situation in the Darfur region of western Sudan is threatening to undermine a recently-signed peace accord, which ended more than two decades of war in the south.
Launching the International Crisis Group's latest report on Darfur at a news conference in Nairobi, the organizations' senior analyst, David Mozersky, gave a bleak assessment of the conflict in western Sudan, which has killed some 70,000 people in the past two years.
"A deteriorating security situation, a looming famine, mounting civilian casualties, an ineffective cease fire, negotiating process that is at a stand-still, the splintering of rebel movements and what appears to be the breakdown of command and control, new armed groups being formed in Darfur and neighboring regions," he said.
Mr. Mozersky says what is most alarming about the current situation is that without a movement toward resolving the conflict in Darfur, there is a possibility that the agreement signed two months ago between the government of Sudan and the southern-based Sudan People's Liberation Movement could be severely undermined.
Mr. Mozersky and the ICG worry that if Khartoum is not pressured into living up to the commitments it has made with regard to Darfur, the Sudanese government may be encouraged not to honor promises it has made to the southern rebels.
Much like the southern SPLA uprising two decades ago, the rebels in Darfur launched their war against the Sudanese government, complaining of political and economic neglect.
The peace accord for the south contains a number of provisions, including power and wealth sharing deals, which many people believe could provide a framework for a political solution in Darfur.
In its Darfur report, the ICG lists several steps, which it believes must be taken now to end the chaos and bloodshed in western Sudan.
Mr. Mozersky says the first step should be for the United Nations' Security Council to impose punitive sanctions on the Sudanese government for ignoring U.N. resolutions ordering Khartoum to disarm and disband pro-government Arab militias. The so-called "Janjaweed" militias are accused of committing gross human rights abuses throughout Darfur.
"It's not sanctions for the sake of sanctions," he added. "It's not part of a policy of regime change. It's sanctions in order to force the government to implement its commitments."
Although a U.N. investigative panel gave evidence last month that crimes against humanity have taken place in Darfur, the Security Council members have not been able to agree on what to do about it.
China, which has strong economic and political ties to Khartoum, has said that it will veto any attempts to impose sanctions on Sudan. And a U.S. opposition to referring Darfur atrocity suspects to the International Criminal Court in The Hague is complicating efforts to find a mechanism for holding people accountable for crimes there.
Mr. Mozersky says without a strong international will to end the war in Darfur, ICG fears the conflict may spread into southern Sudan and destroy any chance of achieving lasting peace in the country.
"If the Security Council doesn't step up and take some kind of steps to hold the parties accountable to the commitments they've signed up to, as well as to what previous Security Council resolutions required of them, then two things will happen," he explained. "First of all, continued fighting. Secondly, it sends a very strong message that the international community does not hold the parties in Sudan accountable to their commitments and this will have repercussions for the implementation of the north-south peace agreement."
It is not only the U.N. Security Council, which is deadlocked on the issue of prosecuting war crimes in Darfur. On Wednesday, the African Union issued a statement, acknowledging that the 53-member group has also been unable to reach a consensus on how to bring culprits to justice.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/10/2005 12:33:10 AM ||
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Anti-aircraft units from the U.S. Army and the Israel Defense Forces will hold an extensive joint anti-aircraft exercise in Israel Thursday. The forces will practice the coordinated operation of anti-aircraft systems including the Arrow anti-ballistic interceptor missile and the Patriot missile air defense batteries.
Anti-aircraft units of the American ground forces have arrived in Israel meanwhile to participate in the exercise, code-named Juniper Cobra. The American and Israeli military have a long tradition of working together, dating back to the first Gulf war of 1991. During the second war against Iraq in 2003, the U.S. sent additional anti-aircraft units here and their deployment began in a previous Juniper Cobra exercise.
As on earlier occasions, Thursday's exercise will examine the extent of coordination between the two sides in various attack scenarios. The exercises will also test air defense systems at different heights, with the Arrow providing protection at great heights and the Patriot at lower heights.
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/10/2005 12:08:42 AM ||
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Just one more indication of the upcoming coordinated attack on the iranian nukes!!!
Posted by: joe beets ||
03/10/2005 12:44 Comments ||
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An international human rights group has called on Pakistan to immediately release or charge two American citizens, both brothers, who were allegedly picked up by Pakistani intelligence agents last year in Karachi for links to Islamic militants and have not been heard from since. New York-based Human Rights Watch also demanded that the U.S. government clarify its involvement in the case in a press release Tuesday. It said the men are ``being held at its (Washington's) behest in Pakistan or elsewhere.'' The brothers - both of Pakistani origin and identified as Zain Afzal, 23, and Kashan Afzal, 25, - are known to be ``Islamist sympathizers'' who trained in Pakistan as guerrilla fighters with Hezb-ul-Mujahedeen, a Muslim militant group, the rights group said.
I just ceased to have the slightest bit of interest in their welfare. How about you?
Sara Zain, the wife of Zain Afzal, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that she has tried for months to find out where her husband was being held, or if he is even alive, but has come up empty. ``I have knocked on every door but nobody is listening,'' she said in a telephone interview from Islamabad.
"They don't care! They just don't care!"
``They should tell me, for God's sake, where are my husband and brother-in-law. I just want to know their whereabouts.'' Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao said he knew nothing of the brothers or the Human Rights Watch statement.
"And if I did, I wouldn't be interested..."
Greg Crouch, a spokesman at the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, said he could not comment on the case due to ``Privacy Act considerations.'' According to the Human Rights Watch report, about 30 intelligence agents entered the home in the southern city of Karachi where the brothers and their families lived on August 13. They collected the men's U.S. passports and other identity papers, handcuffed the suspects and took them away. But no charges have apparently been filed since then and the brothers have not turned up anywhere, the rights group and Zain said. The rights group said Afzal was also held for one day in May 2004 by Pakistani intelligence officials, who questioned him about a trip he took to Afghanistan. It claims he was ``severely tortured'' under questioning.
This article starring:
Greg Crouch, a spokesman at the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad
Human Rights Watch
Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao
KASHAN AFZAL
Hezb-ul-Mujahedeen
Sara Zain, the wife of Zain Afzal
ZAIN AFZAL
Hezb-ul-Mujahedeen
Hezb-ul-Mujahedeen
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/10/2005 12:17:47 AM ||
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#1
This is easy to solve. Just tell this allen loving group of terror supporters they were sent to see allen. Refuse to discuess anything further with them.
Most of Tunisia's 1,400 lawyers went on strike yesterday to protest what they say was police brutality against lawyers in a court of justice, lawyers said. "An overwhelming majority of the lawyers walked out of the court in bunches in Tunis for the strike, except a small number of lawyers who are staunch government backers," lawyer Nejib Chebbi told Reuters.
The North African country's bar association called for the one-day walkout to protest against what it called violence and mistreatment of lawyers by the police. "Only one lawyer out of about 600 did not follow the strike in Sfax," lawyer Abdelwahab Maatar told Reuters by telephone from the main Tunisian southern city, which lies 240 km from Tunis. Lawyers said about 200 police stormed Tunis' main court last week to forcibly remove some 50 lawyers defending a colleague arrested for criticizing the government over an invitation to host Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. The country's leading opposition parties vowed to stop Sharon from becoming the first Israeli leader to visit Tunisia in 57 years for a UN-backed World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis in November.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/10/2005 00:00:00 ||
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#1
this is probably a good thing - more post Jan 30 democratic ferment. See Gerecht's last in the Daily Standard
A Sudanese rebel group will not take part in talks on peace in Darfur until war crimes suspects in the troubled region are referred to an international court for trial, the group said yesterday. The announcement by one of two main rebel groups, the Justice and Equality Movement, casts further doubt on whether a new round of peace talks will start as planned in the Nigerian capital Abuja later this month. The African Union, which sponsors the talks, is holding separate meetings with rebels and the government in an attempt to find common ground after several rounds of talks failed last year to produce an effective ceasefire deal. The rebel group said it wanted to see the process of prosecutions begin before returning to the negotiating table. "We affirm the movement will not participate in the peace negotiations before the referral of the criminals to the (International Criminal) Court and we think this embodies the wishes of all the people of Darfur," said their statement, addressed to the president of the UN Security Council.
The statement, sent to Reuters, said the movement remained committed to peace talks with the government and to respecting all agreements signed with Khartoum. A UN-appointed commission of inquiry into the fighting in Darfur stopped short of agreeing with a US declaration of genocide there, but gave Secretary-General Kofi Annan a sealed list of 51 people suspected of war crimes.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/10/2005 00:00:00 AM ||
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Hundreds of Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) activists yesterday staged a demonstration against the removal of the "religion" column from the Pakistani passport, accusing the government of attempting to turn the Islamic country into a secular state.
Oh, horrors! Oh, quick, Ethel! My pills!
The protesters marched along the capital's main roads and chanted slogans against the government and President Pervez Musharraf. Protesters also burned an effigy of Musharraf, witnesses said. Banners and placards waved by the emotional protesters read: "Go, Musharraf! Go!" and "Friends of Americans are infidels", about 5,000 followers of religious parties rallied amid Musharraf's calls for people to combat extremism and stop the misuse of mosques and madrassas. "The rulers want to turn Pakistan into a secular state," Hafiz Hussain Ahmed, a top leader of the six-party Islamic alliance told an emotionally charged rally. "But we will never allow them to do so," he promised as the crowd cheered.
The latest confrontation between Musharraf and the religious bloc erupted after the government issued new machine-readable passports in October. In line with international standards, they do not include a column specifying the holder's religion. Previously, Pakistani passports required bearers to state whether they were Muslims, Christians, Buddhists or affiliates of other religions. The change has enraged Islamists, who have vowed protests to force the government to reverse it. "The column of religion was removed to appease America," said Qazi Hussain Ahmed, head of the MMA.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/10/2005 00:00:00 AM ||
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#1
I agree..they should also have additional columns >>Stupid,Dumb,Throw-back,stone-age,Fartwa etc.
#2
Hundreds of Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) activists yesterday staged a "religionâ column from the Pakistani passport, accusing the government of attempting to turn the Islamic country into a secular state.
Ah, that's kinda like what the Greek Orthodox Church did a couple years back when the Greek government decided to remove the "religion" column from the Greek ID card. Except ofcourse then they managed to mobilize a crowd of not hundreds but hundreds *thousands* people.
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.
Federal prosecutors have linked 
A group of men were detained by the 
The Summary Court in Riyadh has asked Al-Watan newspaper to present a detailed reply, within two weeks, to the lawsuit filed a few months ago against the daily by prominent Saudi scholar 
A notorious London-based imamdescribed by U.S. officials as Osama bin Laden's principal "ambassador" in Europemay soon be back on the streets because Britain's highest court has struck down an anti-terror law allowing him to be detained without trial. The preacher, known as 
The Bush administration told the Irish Republican Army on Wednesday that it should disband following the outlawed group's offer to shoot four men responsible for killing a Catholic civilian. The statement was the administration's bluntest criticism yet of the IRA. The call from the U.S. envoy to Northern Ireland, Mitchell Reiss, came a week ahead of St. Patrick's Day when, for the first time in a decade, leaders of the IRA's Sinn Fein party will not be guests of the White House. This year the invitations are going elsewhere — to the five sisters of the IRA's most recent victim, Robert McCartney, a 33-year-old forklift operator and nightclub bouncer.
Almost a third of the government's arms sales machine is dedicated to selling to a single regime, Saudi Arabia. A Ministry of Defence publication circulated to defence firms and obtained by the Guardian shows the extent of Saudi dependence on Britain to run its air force. According to the document, no fewer than 161 of the department's 600 officials work for the "Saudi Armed Forces Project". The team is headed by Air Vice-Marshal John Thompson, based in central London. He has a place on Deso's [Defence Export Services Organisation, the Whitehall department which sells British weapons round the world] main board, headed by Alan Garwood, a former executive of Britain's biggest arms company, BAE. 
Chechen insurgents vowed Wednesday to wage an Islamic "holy war" against Russian control of the republic after separatist leader Aslan Maskhadov was slain by Russian special forces. Russian officials, however, predicted that Maskhadov's death Tuesday would deal a sharp setback to insurgents in the mainly Muslim republic who are seeking independence. Aslambek Aslakhanov, an adviser to President Vladimir Putin, said he believed the leading rebels "will now enter a fray to take Maskhadov's place," but none would be able to match the former leader's ability to attract foreign political and financial support. "The destruction of Maskhadov therefore will reduce the funding of gangs," he said.
There are about 1,500 militants active in Chechnya, although they lack a leader capable of uniting their dispersed units, Chechen State Council Chairman Taus Dzhabrailov told Interfax on Wednesday. "Currently, there are approximately 100 militant groups, with a total number of no more than 1,500 men. Approximately half of these forces, including international mercenaries, are under [field commander Shamil] Basayev's command or cooperating with them. But mainly, they are dispersed forces and there is no one in Chechnya who could unite them," Dzhabrailov said.
FOR a man who rarely appears in public, North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il is pressed for time. Mr Kim's emotions got the better of him during a recent meeting with factory managers and those who run small businesses when he said the demands of running the state had left him little time to sleep, a Japanese website that monitors North Korean news reported yesterday. 'I wish one second could be one hour so that I can work more for the nation and the people,' he said, according to 
At the time, the Hollywood actor had never heard of al-Qaida or its reclusive leader. But Osama bin Laden, it seems, knew all about Russell Crowe. In one of the more unlikely terrorist plots, the Oscar winner has revealed that he was a kidnap target for the network, and that the FBI was so concerned about his safety that it gave him protection for four years. The FBI told him that terrorists had devised a "cultural destabilisation plan" that involved seizing high-profile actors.
Muslim clerics in Spain issued what they called the world's first fatwa, or Islamic edict, against Osama bin Laden on Thursday, the first anniversary of the Madrid train bombings, calling him an apostate and urging others of their faith to denounce the al-Qaida leader. 
ISLAMIC extremists behind the train bombings in Madrid a year ago were planning other attacks before they blew themselves up as police raided their apartment, an investigating judge has told Spain's El Pais newspaper. A video found in the rubble warned of "new attacks and attacks against various targets: schools, a Jewish centre in Avila". Magistrate Olga Sanchez, who is heading the probe into the train blasts, said. "The suicide, happily, put an end to those plans," she said.
The Pentagon's widest-ranging examination of prisoner abuse at U.S. detention facilities has concluded that there was no deliberate high-level policy that led to numerous cases of mistreatment, and instead blames inept leadership at low levels and confusion over changing interrogation rules, according to government and defense officials who have read the report.
Chicago police said Thursday that detectives have been sent to a Milwaukee suburb after being notified about a possible suicide in that suburb. Police would not confirm if the shooting was related to the slayings of a federal judge's mother and husband 10 days ago, police spokesman Hector Alfaro said. A published report said a man who shot himself in the head in West Allis, Wis., left a suicide note claiming responsibility for the slayings of U.S. District Judge Joan Humphrey Lefkow's mother and husband.
The 
Former world leaders appealed to the United Nations on Thursday to come up with a definition of terrorism, arguing that political aims should never be used as an excuse to kill innocent civilians.
Tens of thousands of people rallied in Damascus Wednesday in support of Syrian President Bashar Assad, who is under intense international pressure over his regime's dominance of Lebanon. The crowd chanted: "One, one, one, Syria and Lebanon are one," as they brandished portraits of the president, his late father Hafez Assad and the head of Lebanon's movement Hizbullah, Hassan Nasrallah. Unofficial estimates said some half-a-million people filled the streets.
The opposition had mixed reactions to the massive pro-Syrian demonstration led by Hizbullah and other resistance groups Tuesday, with many saluting Hizbullah but deploring its backing of Syria. Many opposition figures singled out the Islamic resistance party as the only legitimate group in the demonstration, and repeated calls for Hizbullah to unite with the opposition. Speaking from Berlin, Chouf MP Walid Jumblatt said he hoped Hizbullah would join the opposition to build "an independent Lebanon." After talks with German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, Jumblatt said: "It is necessary and important to have a dialogue with Hizbullah. We wish they would join us ... as defenders of Lebanon, a democratic Lebanon." However, Jumblatt renewed his calls for a "clear-cut timetable" for the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon.
Karl Marx doesn't get quoted much these days. But his view that history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce, has an uneasy resonance as former Premier 
Iranian officials on Tuesday threatened to break off negotiations with France, Britain and Germany if the three European Union heavyweights continue to insist that Tehran abandon all sensitive atomic activities. European officials began a new round of talks with Iranian negotiators in Geneva aimed at working out a permanent resolution to the standoff over Iran's nuclear program. "If the Europeans refuse our proposals during the next couple of days, their proposals will be strongly opposed by Iran as well," Foreign Ministry spokesman 
An Iranian appeals court has ruled that dissident academic 
March 10, 2005: Money is a weapon of war that is not often talked about. In the war on terror, money is often a more effective weapon than those that make loud noises. In Afghanistan, Iraq and throughout the world, there are many heavily armed groups that will take cash in return for information, protection or active participation in a fight. In the opening days of the 2001 war in Afghanistan, it was cash (in the form of hundred dollar bills) that made the big difference. Afghan warlords could see only a few Special Forces troopers and CIA field agents, and that didn't impress them much. Then they were offered cash, up to a few hundred thousand dollars worth (depending on how many gunmen the warlord commanded). That was an offer Afghan warlords could understand. Some of them had made cash deals with the Taliban, and a few had even allowed themselves to be bought off by the Russians during the 1980s. 
An international human rights group has called on Pakistan to immediately release or charge two American citizens, both brothers, who were allegedly picked up by Pakistani intelligence agents last year in Karachi for links to Islamic militants and have not been heard from since. New York-based 
Most of Tunisia's 1,400 lawyers went on strike yesterday to protest what they say was police brutality against lawyers in a court of justice, lawyers said. "An overwhelming majority of the lawyers walked out of the court in bunches in Tunis for the strike, except a small number of lawyers who are staunch government backers," lawyer Nejib Chebbi told Reuters. 
A Sudanese rebel group will not take part in talks on peace in Darfur until war crimes suspects in the troubled region are referred to an international court for trial, the group said yesterday. The announcement by one of two main rebel groups, the Justice and Equality Movement, casts further doubt on whether a new round of peace talks will start as planned in the Nigerian capital Abuja later this month. The African Union, which sponsors the talks, is holding separate meetings with rebels and the government in an attempt to find common ground after several rounds of talks failed last year to produce an effective ceasefire deal. The rebel group said it wanted to see the process of prosecutions begin before returning to the negotiating table. "We affirm the movement will not participate in the peace negotiations before the referral of the criminals to the (International Criminal) Court and we think this embodies the wishes of all the people of Darfur," said their statement, addressed to the president of the UN Security Council.
Hundreds of 
