An official source from the Saudi Ministry of Interior confirmed that there is no evidence or concrete information regarding the deaths of any of the 36 most wanted terrorists. The statement was made in response to announcements made by the parents of some wanted terrorists that their sons had been killed abroad.
"Whuzzat? I'm on the 36 Most Wanted List? Maw! Tell 'em I'm dead or somethin', okay?"
The official source reported that, "We spoke to the families before issuing the list and made enquiries regarding the whereabouts of the terrorists. They stated that they were unaware of their locations and only knew that they have been traveling for a long time." He also stated, "We have no confirmed information that any of the wanted terrorists have been killed. Whoever has any information should report to the nearest security center or contact us by telephone." As for the statement made by Abu Musab Al Zarqawi about the killing of the wanted Saudi terrorist, Abdullah Al Rushoud, the Ministry of Interior confirmed that no official information has been reported and that it will continue its search for Al-Rashoud.
"If we don't have the paperwork, it didn't happen."
Immediately after the issuing of the most wanted terrorists list, some parents of the 36 reported that they received phone calls declaring the death of their sons in Iraq. Some families said that their sons had been killed in fighting between Iraqi resistance and the Allied Forces in Al-Qaim and Fallujah, whereas others stated that their sons had died in suicide operations. It was announced on a fundamentalist website that Fares Al Zaheri, whose name appears on the most wanted list, had died during the Hijri month of Shawwal and that his family has been receiving condolences for his death. Prince Nayef Bin Abdel Aziz, the Saudi Interior Minister, however, affirmed in a recent press conference, that no official information had been received about the deaths of any of the men on the list, which includes 15 wanted terrorists believed to be outside Saudi. In the same conference, the Minister welcomed the idea of security cooperation with Iraq against Islamists.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/05/2005 00:00 ||
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Crown Prince Abdullah yesterday lashed out at terrorists who try to undermine the Kingdom's security and stability and said the government was determined to finish them off and drive them from their hide-outs. "We will continue with our campaign to wipe out the deviant group (Al-Qaeda) and exterminate the roots of terrorism and terrorists who target the nation's security and safety," the Saudi Press Agency quoted him as saying. The crown prince commended the security forces for the good work and said their âgreat sacrificesâ had helped the country eliminate a large number of terrorists and prevented many terrorist attacks. He also praised the cooperation extended by Saudis and expatriates to security officers.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/05/2005 00:00 ||
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#1
Lol! This would certainly thin the overflowing pool of Royals. On a pure greed level, think how much larger the share of loot for the remainder, distributed by rank, of course...
#4
Personally, I hope the termites coming home to nest "helps" the royals change their tune. Still gotta long way to go (call me an optimist), but just allowing women to vote in local elections, and him even speaking out against terrorism is a positive to me. Now, I won't hold my breath on the funding issue, though.
Posted by: BA ||
07/05/2005 9:09 Comments ||
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EDINBURGH: Up to 1000 anarchists have been blamed for bringing the Scottish capital to a standstill and provoking fierce confrontations with police. The centre of Edinburgh was flooded with hundreds of riot police who fought anti-capitalist protesters repeatedly less than 48 hours before the start of the G8 summit. With more trouble predicted for today's summit opening at the Gleneagles Hotel in Perthshire, police said up to 30 protesters had been arrested. Tom Halpin, Assistant Chief Constable of Lothian and Borders Police, accused protesters of "reckless and irresponsible behaviour".
However, protesters accused police of being heavy-handed after several dozen officers, in full riot gear, drew their retractable truncheons as they ran through Prince's Street Gardens, on the northern side of Edinburgh's main thoroughfare, striking onlookers as well as protesters. A cyclist trying to move out of the way of a skirmish was hit with a baton.
Tensions had been rising all day during the unofficial "Festival for Full Enjoyment", a series of marches and blockades across the city involving about 1000 anarchists, clowns, drummers and a troupe with sparkly wings calling themselves the Fairy Army.
What, no giant puppets?
The protest began quietly, with journalists and police outnumbering the marchers by at least four to one. Marchers blew bubbles, shook bells, waved streamers and scattered fake bank notes. One carried a placard saying: "Unemployed and loving it".
Yeah, having a job really cuts down on the time you have available to protest people with jobs
A winged member of the Fairy Army said he was there to have fun and to "spread a little magic".
But the presence of small groups of masked youths, some waving black flags, betrayed a more sinister element. Hundreds of anarchists mingled among the protesters and by mid-afternoon most of Prince's Street was sealed off by riot police. A handful of officers moved among the crowd photographing people. In Canning Street, in Edinburgh's financial district, police hemmed in about 300 protesters. One scaled a 7m wall and mooned police below.
The police response could not have been more different from the low-key presence at Saturday's well-organised and peaceful Make Poverty History march, attended by an estimated 200,000 people. The turning point was a scuffle in Prince's Street Gardens, in which anarchists tore up plants from flower beds and threw them at police.
Chuffy Dominguez, 18, from Glasgow, who was dressed as a clown, said: "This is unbelievable. The police are baton-charging people who are here today to party on the streets. It's a deliberate ploy to stigmatise anarchists by flooding the place with riot police and penning us in. It's a sad day."
Posted by: Steve ||
07/05/2005 13:11 ||
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#1
And isn't it too bad we all can't be clowns and drummers and wear sparkly wings and be "Unemployed and loving it"?
I'd want to be either that or a Scotish cop cracking empty hippie skulls...
#2
The anarchists got exactly what they want which is a violent reaction from the police. I think masked persons should be shot on sight. Troublemaking is all they are about. Only Cowards have to hide their faces.
#3
It's was cooler to play dress up and wear a black and a mask. Pretend palis and wannabe Bukharins, tender Trotskiets and sweet Stalinists, mauve Maos greenie Giaps, a real credit to our planet.
#5
They can protest all they want, but if they actually obstruct British national security traffic in and out of the Navy base - I suggest they be nominated for the Rachel Corrie (?sp) Pancake Award. I am certain there must be a D-9 or the equivalent somewhere available to the UK authorities. If not, let's take up a collection for them.
RSF has condemned the killing of Magomedzagid Varisov, the second journalist to be murdered this year in Russia, and called on Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev to order an immediate investigation to identify both perpetrators and instigators and bring them to justice.
Varisov was gunned down at around 9:00 p.m. (local time) on 28 June 2005 in Makhachkala, capital of the southwestern republic of Dagestan, as he was getting out of his car in front of his home. He died instantly, while his driver, who was wounded by several shots, was hospitalised. Varisov's wife, who was also with him, was not hit. The police said they were looking for a black Lada car which the gunmen used to get away.
It seems likely that Varisov was killed because of his work as a journalist. The head of the political section of the weekly "Novoye Delo", Varisov was very critical of the Dagestani opposition in his articles. He also headed the Republican Centre for Strategic and Political Initiatives.
In a recent article, Varisov had raised questions about the fact that some 1,000 refugees from the Chechen village of Borozdinovskaya (in the Chelkovsky region) had crossed illegally into Dagestan after a Russian Special Forces raid on the village. He accused the Dagestani opposition of exploiting the situation to stir up hatred between the Chechen and Dagestani communities.
Varisov's murder came just as "Novoye Delo" was about to publish a second article naming those responsible for the ease of cross-border movements between Dagestan and Chechnya. Varisov and other members of the newspaper's editing team had been receiving telephoned death threats over the past year and Varisov told his colleagues he had been followed several times.
On 30 June, the http://www.kavkazcenter.com website posted a letter from the Wahhabi Islamist group "Sharia" claiming responsibility for the murder. "We punished the one who was the FSB [Federal Security Services, formerly KGB] collaborator, who was the spokesman for Kremlin propaganda and for those who are in power in Dagestan, and who was one of the ideologues of the struggle against the establishment of the Sharia in Dagestan," the message said.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
07/05/2005 17:32 ||
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Who doesnât love a good spy story? Shadowy operatives, evil terrorists, dangerous betrayals and the future of the free world hanging in the balance. Throw in the suggestion of sinister conspiracies at the very top of government--and some sex, of course--and youâve got a pretty good book to take to the beach.
But when real U.S. officials start acting like theyâre living a Robert Ludlum saga, then youâve got problems. And the more documentation that surfaces about the mysterious abduction of a suspected Al Qaeda figure from the streets of Italy in February 2003, the more it looks like whoever in the administration ordered the snatch got carried away with the dangerous glamour of the moment.
The arrest warrant issued by Italian judge Chiara Nobili charges 13 presumed CIA operatives--10 men and three women-- allegedly involved in the kidnapping of Mostafa Hassan Nasr Osama, a.k.a. Abu Omar, on Feb. 17, 2003. At just about noon that day, he was bundled into a truck, driven to a U.S. airbase, and flown to Egypt for some tough questioning. Three other men and three other women are also named in the warrants, but because they were not at the scene of the kidnapping, have no arrest orders against them. The 230-page court document chronicles all of these charactersâ movements, some of their meals, their raids on hotel minibars, even, it would seem at first glance, their romances.
Some of the alleged agents started showing up in Milan at the end of 2002, but most converged on the city in late January 2003. They stayed at some of the finest hotels, including the elegant Principe di Savoia and the Westin Palace. Their king-size beds and their well-equipped gyms were close to the fashionable shopping streets, and far from the dreary industrial zone where Abu Omar lived, worked, prayed and allegedly recruited terrorists. But the mobile phones they used showed up many times in his neighborhood. Each âcellâ in a network has a record of every call made through it, in case you didnât know. More importantly, if the agents knew, they didnât seem to care. It was those records that allowed their movements to be traced so closely.
On the weekend of Feb. 1-2, 2003, 10 members of the team took off for the city of La Spezia on the coast. The beach resort is pretty depressing that time of year, but Monica*, the youngest on the team, was marking her 30th birthday that weekend. Maybe that was the occasion. In any case, the court records say she shared a room that weekend with 50-year-old John D. (Eliana, 33, and Ben, 58, also bunked together.) Then five members of the team, including Monica and John D., went off to a sumptuous hotel in Florence for two more days. Another couple, 41-year-old Pilar and 63-year-old Ray H., went from La Spezia to the out-of-the-way Alpine village of Chiesa de Valmalenco near the Swiss border. Joseph S., who was born in Eastern Europe in 1953, and seems to have exquisite taste, blew off the beaches, the mountains and Monicaâs birthday. He went to the legendary Danieli Hotel in Venice.
It looks like they were all taking a break, and they probably needed it. By then, the pressure on C.I.A. operatives doing this kind of fieldwork must have been enormous. They had taken the point in the Global War on Terror, pursuing Al Qaedaâs key figures wherever they might be found. In coordination with many different intelligence services, they had tracked down most of those linked directly to 9/11. As Dana Priest reported last week in The Washington Post, an extraordinary top-secret counter-terrorism center known as Alliance Base was set up in France soon after the attacks on Washington and New York, with French, British, German, Canadian, Australian and American case officers not only sharing information but planning operations against terrorist cells.
Now a new war, with Iraq, was only weeks away. The Bush administration obsessed with the notion that Saddam Hussein might strike back anywhere at any time with those weapons of mass destruction he was supposed to have. The administration was pushing hard to make the case to itself and to the world that the threat was imminent and immense. At Alliance Base, as Priestâs article suggests, the worldâs best counter-terrorist minds were less than convinced. (For a snapshot of the thinking at that time, see âRumors of War,â from March 2003. ) But in Italy there were some tantalizing bits of information still to be mined. The Italian government of billionaire Silvio Berlusconi was backing the American rush to war, volunteering to send troops, showing itself a solid member of the âNew Europeâ on the Bush team. Unlike the British, who dreamed of moderating Bushâs behavior, or the French who found W distasteful and dangerous, Berlusconi was an unapologetic cheerleader.
In 2002, Italians with spooky connections helpfully provided documents that seemed to show Saddam was trying to buy uranium from the African nation of Niger. President Bush famously referred to this ostensible danger in his State of the Union speech in January 2003. Then the documents turned out to be clumsy forgeries. In early February 2003, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell went before the United Nations to make the American case for invasion. Heâd dropped the Niger stuff, but picked up other Italian threads of information about terrorists with horrible weapons.
Powell fixed on the network of Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, a then-little-known terrorist wannabe who had been operating out of the Kurdish area in northern Iraq, but whose actual ties to Saddam were hard to substantiate. âSince last year, members of this network have been apprehended in France, Britain, Spain and Italy. By our last count, 116 operatives connected to this global web have been arrested,â Powell told the world. He limned Zarqawi-linked conspiracies to use deadly poisons in Great Britain, Chechnya, even in the Pankisi Gorge in the Caucasus. But, still, no solid link to Saddam. Powell showed a slide that underscored what was supposed to be known, and implied what needed to be known. A large block on the diagram read: âPossible Italy Cell.â
Powellâs speech came the same day the alleged kidnapping team assembled again in Milan. Their target, Abu Omar, looked like he might be the missing link tying terror to Saddam and deadly toxins. Italian prosecutors and judicial police had been building a case against the Egyptian preacher for months, in consultation with the FBI, according to a senior Italian source involved with the investigation. But Washington intended to invade Iraq in March, no matter what, and Italian prosecutors were not ready to arrest him. The Italian plan, according to the same source, was to nail Abu Omar and other alleged members of the same network in early April 2003. But Monica and her friends snatched him off the street in the middle of February. A few days later, according to traces run by the Italian prosecutors, the telephone used by Bob L., the man identified in the court documents as head of the C.I.A. in Milan, showed up in Egypt for a couple of weeks. That would have been the time when interrogators most needed the expertise of someone like Bob, who had been thoroughly briefed on the case by the Italian political police, known as DIGOS.
As happened so often when the Bush administration went looking for grand conspiracies in the free-wheeling spring of 2003, Abu Omar wasnât able to tell the Americans all they wanted or needed to hear. Fourteen months later, the Egyptians briefly let him out of prison, apparently thinking they had turned him into a collaborator. He phoned his wife and another imam in Milan and told his story. Italian police, who monitored those calls, set out to find whoever had stolen him. The cell phone records from the scene of the kidnapping, like crumbs in the forest, led the way to the C.I.A.
Most of the people on the team were in their 40s, 50s or 60s. Presumably they were old pros. Why didnât they do a better job of covering their tracks? Almost certainly because they believed the fix was in.
Both American and Italian press reports claim that the head of Italyâs Intelligence and Military Security Service (SISMI), Nicolo Pollari, was informed about the kidnapping before it took place. The Berlusconi government has flatly denied this. It claims no one in the Italian government or its intelligence services had any prior knowledge of this crime, which the Italian judge calls an affront to national sovereignty. A source close to the prosecution tells me that the search goes on for direct links to whatever Italian officials may have approved it. They are the ârealâ targets of the investigation, according to this source, although no proof has surfaced. (Coincidentally, one of Pollariâs top deputies, Maj. Gen. Nicola Calipari, was shot and killed accidentally by American troops in Iraq earlier this year.)
Like most good spy stories, this one has a quiet denouement. For the American officers in the field, the ârenditionâ of Abu Omar to Egypt must have seemed a cause to celebrate. Certainly they acted that way. Aviano airbase, where theyâd put him on a plane, is near Venice. Four members of the team decided to chill there for a couple of days. Others drove back to Milan, then disappeared off the Italian map. The tasteful Joseph S. went with Cyntia, 42, to a spa at Montecatini Terme, then on to Bolzano, in the Tyrol. A few months later, the C.I.A. man in Milan retired to a lovely farmhouse among pastures and vineyards near Asti, according to court documents. Italian reporters whoâve been to the village say he hasnât been seen by his neighbors for several months.
The Italian court documents give the full names, passport numbers, credit card numbers, even "preferred guest numbers" in some cases. Several of the names in the documents probably are "covers" and completely false. Others are unquestionably genuine. There are both legal and ethical questions involved here, but on balance I think this is not the place to play any part in "outing " undercover CIA agents.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
07/05/2005 16:57 ||
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I wish thier was more of this kind of thing going on. Maybe then we could actually have some intellegence. The spy agency is not a classy group they are their to get info hard to get from either shaddy people who will sell thier friends out for some reason or by doing shaddy things. I hope thier is more of this going on and I wish that we didnt have to take prisoners to Egypt to interrogate them a so so ally if you ask me. No I am not saying we should be doing the electroshock thing and all kinds of other wild stuff but I do believe a good strong dose of LSD and some strong words and enviroment changes could get anything we need without pulling fingernails or cutting off fingers. War is hell it is gruesome and it is very violent and it is a winner take all game. War is meant to be horrible that way us and especially our enemies dont want to go thier and understand that if they do their will be payment. Our current sanatized war with all of these rules make war not so horrible and will result in continuous war. If your enemies are not forced to pay dearly why should they be scared. War is War and it should be horrible not just a game were people happen to die.
Besides on the grab and torture thing last time I heard the guy in Germany that was associated with Al Queda and part of 9-11 was convicted then overturned and in retrial while out FREE ON THE STREET on Bond. With our "allies" treating our enemies like this why should we trust them to arrest,interrogate, then somehow prosecute our enemies. Wether we like it or not Europe either dont see the threat to themselves or due to huge muslim populations are to scared to rage a war especially when we will do it for them.
Via Guerzoni is a quiet street on the outskirts of Milan in a former industrial neighborhood that is somewhere between decrepitude and redevelopment. High walls line both sides of the road for about 100 yards as it runs between a park and a half-abandoned plant nursery. If youâre in the business of making people disappearâcall it kidnapping or maybe counterterrorism or, in the Bushian jargon of the moment, ârenditionââthen Via Guerzoni is a good venue. Few people are around, and many of those are Muslim immigrants who want as little to do with the police as they can.
So whoever snatched an Egyptian-born imam known as Abu Omar off Via Guerzoni in broad daylight on Feb. 17, 2003, had planned well. And if their tradecraft had been a little bit better, the incident could have been kept very quiet and forgotten quickly. But they screwed up, and soon, possibly as early as next week, you can look for the abduction of Abu Omar to emerge as a major embarrassment to President George W. Bush and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
The fiercely independent judiciary in Milan, led by investigating magistrate Armando Spataro, has prepared a case and expects to issue warrants alleging that a dozen or more foreign agents, some of them reportedly Americans, were involved in the abduction of Abu Omar. They are supposed to have driven him in the truck to the U.S. airbase at Aviano, Italy, then flown him to Cairo. In Egypt, as the saying goes, âthey have ways of making you talk.â
Since Italian reporter Carlo Bonini first broke the story of this investigation in the Rome daily La Repubblica last February, U.S. officials have been waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Spokesmen at the U.S. consulate in Milan and the U.S. Embassy in Rome said they were unable to comment on any of the substantive questions, and they believed no official requests for information have been received from the Italian government. That will change if and when the arrest warrants are issued.
Now that the second-term Bush administration is advocating democracy and the rule of law around the world, its own lawless ways during the first term are an embarrassment. Whatâs been called, with a bit of hyperbole, the Guantanamo gulag has become a liability. So are ongoing revelations about the practice of ârenditionsâ: sending suspected terrorists to countries with even fewer scruples about interrogation practices than the Bush administration. (âOutsourcing tortureâ is the catch phrase used by human-rights activists in Italy and elsewhere.)
The Italian secret service known as DIGOS (formerly âthe political policeâ) had focused on him in the summer of 2002, when a bug theyâd placed in the Via Quaranta mosque picked up a conversation he had with a visitor from Germany outlining plans to restructure a terrorist organization thatâs been connected to both Al Qaeda and the now-infamous Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. So even people who knew and sympathized with Abu Omar werenât sure, at first, that he hadnât decided secretly to go fight the Americans in Afghanistanâor maybe Iraq, where the war was just about to begin.
Too bad, from the kidnappersâ point of view, that a woman walking out of the park on Via Guerzoni that chilly February afternoon in 2003 saw two men spray something in Abu Omarâs face and bundle him into the back of a truck. Even worse, for those who wanted to hush up the whole affair, Abu Omar resurfacedâat least by telephone. On April 20, 2004, more than a year after heâd disappeared, the Italian cops listened in on a phone call he placed from Egypt to his wife in Milan, telling her heâd been in prison, but was now under a kind of house arrest; he would send her money, and she should be quiet. But Abu Omar didnât take his own advice. He called another imam in Milan and eventually recounted the tale of how heâd been abducted and where heâd been taken. Soon afterward, Abu Omar dropped out of sight again in Egypt, presumably re-imprisoned. A lawyer for the Jamaa Islamiya, an Egyptian group to which Abu Omar belonged, says he has no idea where the imam is now, whether in jail, alive or dead.
Over the last year, Iâve collected many hundreds of pages of court documents, warrants, official transcripts, rulings and appeals related to the various terrorist cases in Italy. Abu Omar figures in almost all of them. And in bits and pieces, more or less discreetly, the public documents confirm much of what Bonini first wrote last February, based on unnamed sources.
In a warrant issued in Milan last month by Judge Guido Salvini against a group of Tunisians suspected of terrorist connections, for instance, there is a concise description of Abu Omarâs case: âIt is now possible to affirm with certainty that he was kidnapped by people belonging to foreign intelligence networks interested in interrogating him and neutralizing him, to then hand him over to Egyptian authorities.â Salvini writes that Italian investigators have confirmed the substance of what Abu Omar recounted in those phone calls from Egypt. In âa kidnapping that was the work of Western agents and which undoubtedly constitutes a serious violation of Italian national sovereignty,â says Salvini, Abu Omar âwas taken to an American base, interrogated and beaten and the next day taken on a U.S. military plane directly, with an intermediate stop, to Egypt.â
Who were the agents involved? According to Bonini, they left a lot of evidence behind, including rental-car contracts, hotel bills and passport details. When Spataro issues his warrants, the names on those documents certainly will be included.
Last week, I passed through Milan and decided to visit the scene of the crime. As I walked the quiet roads between Abu Omarâs apartment and that lonely stretch of Via Guerzoni where he was kidnapped, I kept thinking of something he was told by the mysterious visitor from Germany in that conversation tape recorded back in the summer of 2002. In the Italian transcript, which I have, they talked about reorganizing the Hizb Al Tahrir group after the post-9/11 arrests in Europe. They talked about money: where to get it (from Saudis); how to use it (to make more money). They talked about âthe youthâ who could be used as martyrs. And toward the end of the chat, the Unidentified Man warned Abu Omar, as if from nowhere, âYou need to study the street, because war ought to be studied âŠâ In the shadow world of terror and counterterror, even a quiet street like Via Guerzoni can be a battlefront.
An Italian judge has ordered the arrest of 13 CIA agents for allegedly helping to seize Abu Omar, The Associated Press reported on June 24. The operativesâall Americansâwere reportedly traced through check-in details at Milan hotels and their use of Italian cell phones during the operation.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
07/05/2005 16:54 ||
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#1
"Road to Rendition" starring Bob Hope, Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour. (Sorry, couldn't help it.)
#6
So does this mean that the Russian- and Chinese- anti-Fascist Fascist Communists = Communist Fascists = Commies for Fascism for Communism =... .....have promised the Socialists of I'TALIA that, like France and the EUro-SOcies, they won't be purged/gulagged after the USA is suborned to SWO and SOcialist OWG!? Come on, people, even in the series AMERIKA the Socialist US COngress got itself politely machine-gunned for challenging
"the Party" and Soviet/Asian rule.
One is a self-proclaimed al Qaeda trainer who openly advocates attacking the United States with weapons of mass destruction.
The other remains in the shadows, charged in connection with the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, and -- if a Spanish prosecutor's suspicions are well grounded -- quietly planning the next major strike on the West.
Mustafa Setmariam and Amer Azizi have both played a starring role in the trial of 24 suspected al Qaeda members that began in April and is expected to conclude this month.
Neither is present in court at Europe's biggest trial of suspected Islamists, but they are the men prosecutors keep asking witnesses about.
Spain has arrested some 200 Islamist militant suspects in recent years as part of nine separate investigations. Setmariam and Azizi, however, have escaped the dragnet and remain two of the country's most wanted fugitives.
They are intelligent, trained in Afghan militant camps, and carry Western passports, both having obtained dual nationality by marrying Spanish women.
The Syrian Setmariam, 46, has been portrayed by investigators as an extroverted and aggressive recruiter of holy warriors.
The Moroccan Azizi, 37, is more reserved and said to be a diligent student of Islam. He is also suspected of involvement in al Qaeda's deadliest attacks of recent years.
"Apart from Setmariam, Azizi is the most dangerous one out there. He is out there planning an attack. I don't know in what country, but it will be something big," says Pedro Rubira, the chief prosecutor in the al Qaeda trial.
"They both have been totally involved ever since they were little. Why would they stop now?" Rubira said.
Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzon has charged Azizi with mass murder for the Sept. 11 attacks, saying he helped arrange planning meetings in Spain in 2001 that were attended by lead hijacker Mohamed Atta.
He is also under investigation in connection with the May 16, 2003, attacks in Casablanca, Morocco, in which 45 people died including 12 suicide bombers.
His stature among violent militants in Madrid was so high that a leader of the 2004 Madrid train bombings asked for his blessing before carrying out the attack, Rubira said.
As for Setmariam, one U.S. counterterrorism official said, "He's certainly an al Qaeda member and a former trainer who was involved in the Derunta and al-Ghuraba terrorist camps in Afghanistan. He trained in poisons and chemicals. ... And there is indeed a reward on his head."
The United States is offering $5 million for information about Setmariam.
The U.S. official would not comment on the possible whereabouts of either man nor gauge the level of threat they might pose.
Rubira, when asked the same questions, shrugged his shoulders.
Setmariam said in a posting on a militant Islamist Web site dated December 2004 that he has decided to "isolate himself". There is no trace of him in Spain since 1995.
Private French investigator Jean-Charles Brisard says Azizi fled Spain for Iran where he joined up with a group loyal to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian who claims to have carried out many of the deadliest attacks in Iraq.
Suspects and defence lawyers say Spanish investigators routinely exaggerate the threat of suspected militants because the have a poor grasp of Arabic and confuse Muslim customs with suspicious activity.
Defence lawyers in the al Qaeda trial under way confidently predict their clients will be cleared, and even the U.S. official said some of the Spanish accusations against Azizi's involvement in planning the Sept. 11 attacks "may be exaggerated."
Setmariam, in his Web posting, called for defeating the United States through three options.
One was through natural disaster sent by God and another was through "resistance and long-term guerrilla warfare" as seen in Fallujah or the Palestinian territories.
"The last option is to destroy America with nuclear, chemical or biological weapons of mass destruction," Setmariam wrote. "The mujahideen should try to obtain or purchase them with the help of those who possess such weapons, or to build crude or dirty bombs."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
07/05/2005 16:52 ||
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#1
I imagine that Zapatero has a form-pad on his desk that says: "I hereby certify that Spain has surrendered to (your name here.) Please don't hurt us."
The Spanish troops who fought in Iraq must throw up anytime they walk past a newsstand.
Posted by: Matt ||
07/05/2005 12:46 Comments ||
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#2
I believe the ETA was indeed involved in the Madrid bombings. This is especially vile, in my opinion.
#4
It is a theory of mine. There are several odd items that have turned up in the past year, and I believe my idea reconciles it all. I believe three or four parties coordinated the attack and its immediate aftermath. 1.ETA 2.Al Qaeda 3.Saddam's Syrian crew 4.Elements of the Spanish Left. Manipulation of the Spanish electoral process was a bit more subtle than simply blowing things up.
As we've been told to keep the comment linking to a minimum, I'll just send you to here and here. Make sure to follow the links, and read the comments at Winds. And of course, you should scope out the Rantburg archives for articles.
By Ted Rall enough said, engage moonbat radiation filters!
NEW YORK--In war collaborators are more dangerous than enemy forces, for they betray with intimate knowledge in painful detail and demoralize by their cynical example. This explains why, at the end of occupations, the newly liberated exact vengeance upon their treasonous countrymen even they allow foreign troops to conduct an orderly withdrawal. If, as state-controlled media insists, there is such a creature as a Global War on Terrorism, our enemies are underground Islamist organizations allied with or ideologically similar to those that attacked us on 9/11. But who are the collaborators?
The right points to critics like Michael Moore, yours truly, and Ward Churchill, the Colorado professor who points out the gaping chasm between America's high-falooting rhetoric and its historical record. But these bête noires are guilty only of the all-American actions of criticism and dissent, not to mention speaking uncomfortable truths to liars and deniers. As far as we know, no one on what passes for the "left" (which would be the center-right anywhere else) has betrayed the United States in the GWOT. No anti-Bush progressive has made common cause with Al Qaeda, Hamas, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan or any other officially designated "terrorist" group. No American liberal has handed over classified information or worked to undermine the CIA.
But it now appears that Karl Rove, GOP golden boy, has done exactly that.
Rove, whose gaping maw recently vomited forth that Democrats didn't care about 9/11, is atypically silent. He did talk to the Time reporter but "never knowingly disclosed classified information," claims his attorney. But there's circumstantial evidence to go along with Time's leaked notes. Ari Fleischer abruptly resigned as Bush's press secretary on May 16, 2003, about the same time the White House became aware of Ambassador Wilson's plans to go public. (Wilson's article appeared July 6.) Did Fleischer quit because he didn't want to act as spokesman for Rove's plan to betray CIA agent Plame? Another interesting coincidence: Novak published his Plame column on July 14, Fleischer's last day on the job.
If Newsweek's report is accurate, Karl Rove is more morally repugnant and more anti-American than Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden, after all, has no affiliation with, and therefore no presumed loyalty to, the United States. Rove, on the other hand, is a U.S. citizen and, as deputy White House chief of staff, a high-ranking official of the U.S. government sworn to uphold and defend our nation, its laws and its interests. Yet he sold out America just to get even with Joe Wilson. Osama bin Laden, conversely, is loyal to his cause. He has never exposed an Al Qaeda agent's identity to the media.
"[Knowingly revealing Plame's name and undercover status to the media]...is a violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act and is punishable by as much as ten years in prison," notes the Washington Post. Unmasking an intelligent agent during a time of war, however, surely rises to giving aid and comfort to America's enemies--treason. Treason is punishable by execution under the United States Code.
How far up the White House food chain does the rot of treason go? "Bush has always known how to keep Rove in his place," wrote Time in 2002 about a "symbiotic relationship" that dates to 1973. This isn't some rogue "plumbers" operation. Rove would never go it alone on a high-stakes action like Valerie Plame. It's a safe bet that other, higher-ranking figures in the Bush cabal--almost certainly Dick Cheney and possibly Bush himself--signed off before Rove called Novak. For the sake of national security, those involved should be removed from office at once.
Rove and his collaborators should quickly resign and face prosecution for betraying their country, but given their sense of personal entitlement impeachment is probably the best we can hope for. Congress, and all Americans, should place patriotism ahead of party loyalty.
Posted by: Steve ||
07/05/2005 11:02 ||
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#1
Let me get my head around this. Ted Rall is lecturing me and everyone else about patriotism and the penalties for treason. When do I get the Bill Clinton abstinence lecture?
Posted by: Matt ||
07/05/2005 11:37 Comments ||
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#4
"But these bête noires are guilty only of the all-American actions of criticism and dissent, not to mention speaking uncomfortable truths to liars and deniers."
Duuude, he, like, used French words and stuff. And he even rhymes. He's, like, real smart. [Fist raised] Speak Truth to Power, TedMan.
#5
Rush just pointed out the one key fact which proves Karl Rove wasn't the leaker. You think Time and Newsweek would have kept this quiet during the 2004 election if he was?
Posted by: Steve ||
07/05/2005 12:10 Comments ||
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#6
The right points to critics like Michael Moore, yours truly
Not so. I never think of you, let alone point at you. Nice try, though, whoever you are.
#7
Bingo Steve! Rush makes and most valid point. Glad I hear it from you because I don't listen to him often. If you want to go looking for trators and backstabbers go loking at the Democrats you will find 99.9% are Democrats and "progressives." I am betting the "leak" is a Democrat too.
If Newsweek's report is accurate, Karl Rove is more morally repugnant and more anti-American than Osama bin Laden
Hell, this idiot (and his fellow travelers) think this regardless of Newsweek's accuracy.
Keep talking, asshole. Assure the Republicans win even more legislative seats and governorships in 2006.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
07/05/2005 12:19 Comments ||
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#10
Good point, Barbara. Every time one of the moonbats says something like this, someone needs to hold it up to Hillary and ask, "Do you agree with this? Is Karl Rove guilty of treason?"
Posted by: Matt ||
07/05/2005 12:23 Comments ||
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#11
"When do I get the Bill Clinton abstinence lecture?" I think that is right after the Ted Kennedy lecture on the evils of drinking and Robert Byrdâs oratory on civil rights for âthose people.â Ok somebody stop me! The fact that Ms Plame was the CIA person, who recommended her dimwitted husband for a mission he clearly wasnât qualified for, shows you everything you need to know about the CIA today. If they donât like an administration they go about their duties with one hand tied behind their backs. You need someone to investigate the possible transfer of nuclear-related materials? OK our âTop Undercover Super Secret Agentâ has a semi-retired husband that is spending entirely too much time around the house. So we will ship his ass over to Niger and have him look around the whorehouses and see if what he can find. Never mind that this idiot has never conducted an investigation and has NO experience with regard to nuclear material. What Goss needs to do is start a clear cut operation in the CIA and jettison the career officials that are more concerned with respect for the un and political correctness than keeping this country safe. The day that the CIA had âGay/Lesbianâ appreciation picnic should have been a clue that things were not in prospective.
#13
Ted Rall should be forced to work harder for a living. Is that the best tripe he can cook up? Pathetic just like those who paid him to exhibit his infantile intellectual powers of deduction and persuasion. In a perfect world Ted Rall would only be paid to write technical manuals on toilet paper.
#14
Rush just pointed out the one key fact which proves Karl Rove wasn't the leaker. You think Time and Newsweek would have kept this quiet during the 2004 election if he was?
Not only that, but Rove apparently also signed waivers allowing any reporter he spoke to to give the details of their discussions.
All this "it was Rove!" bull comes from Larry "creepy liar" O'Donnel (or whatever). He's a partisan lunatic, but apparently his ejaculations are newsworthy.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
07/05/2005 13:03 Comments ||
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higher-ranking figures in the Bush cabal
The Bush "cabal?" Is it supposed to be a secret that the exectutive branch is, um, running the country?
#17
Another Karl Rove genius move. The old "hat on a stick" ploy to see who shoots. Thanks Ted, for spewing forth your moonbat vomitus. Keep speaking up...it helps us out
#18
Ya know how the moonbats always accuse Bush of only ever talking to his "inner circle?" Watch a few episodes of West Wing. Do you ever see President Bartlet ever talking to anyone not on his personal staff? I don't think he even *has* a SecDef...
#19
Don't listen to Rush. He only defends me between hits of Percocet.
Those people... (hit)
Those people... (hit)
Those people... (hit)
Those people... (hit)
Posted by: Karl ||
07/05/2005 13:43 Comments ||
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#20
Better lay off that West Virginia moonshine, Karl. It's bad for your grades.
Posted by: Steve ||
07/05/2005 14:10 Comments ||
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Thank yuh Karl fuh defendin us agin the ravins of these heah raht wing lunatics. A west Virginy boy are ya? Y'all remembah me at e-lectin time, ya heah?
Posted by: Robert C. Byrd: Exalted Cyclops(Ret.) ||
07/05/2005 14:43 Comments ||
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#22
Poser. Do that again and I'll have you killed. In front of your family. The dog, too.
Byrd, you just don't get it. Never have. Never will. You're my bitch. STFU and make me some Johnny cakes 'n beans. Heavy on the bacon.
Posted by: .The Real Karl ||
07/05/2005 15:08 Comments ||
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#23
Hopefully, a peice like this will embolden Harry Reid, Teddy K or Smilin' Nancy Pelosi to utter similar comments. Please, please, please! It is such obvious moonbattery that you would think that Rall is on Rove's payroll. "Say Ted, could you write something that will make the left seem, you know, completely off their meds?" "You bet Karl. I'll have it for you in a jiff."
#25
WASHINGTON â A federal prosecutor on Tuesday demanded that Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper testify before a grand jury investigating the leak of a CIA officer's identity, even though Time Inc. has surrendered e-mails and other documents in the probe. Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald also opposed the request of Cooper and New York Times reporter Judith Miller to be granted home detention â instead of jail â for refusing to reveal their sources. Allowing the reporters home confinement would make it easier for them to continue to defy a court order to testify, he said. Special treatment for journalists may "negate the coercive effect contemplated by federal law," Fitzgerald wrote in filings with the court. "Journalists are not entitled to promise complete confidentiality â no one in America is," Fitzgerald wrote.
Fitzgerald is investigating who in the administration leaked the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame, a possible federal crime. Plame's identity was leaked days after her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, publicly disparaged the president's case for invading Iraq. Plame's name was first published in a 2003 column by Robert Novak, who cited two unidentified senior Bush administration officials as his sources. Novak has refused to say whether he has testified or been subpoenaed.
Hint, it ain't gonna be Karl Rove, Ted.
Posted by: Steve ||
07/05/2005 16:32 Comments ||
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Ted Rall makes Gary Trudeau look like a reasoned intellectual.
Hell, Ted Rall makes a feces-flinging chimp look like a reasoned intellectual.
Posted by: Darth VAda ||
07/05/2005 17:59 Comments ||
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Home detention my ass. Welcome to the DC lockup, bitch. Say hello to Mr. Dover.
The United States plans to cut by almost a third the number of military personnel currently deployed at the Rota naval base in Spain. The US is to withdraw an entire special forces unit as well as an air reconnaissance squadron. In May, it was reported that the US was considering a plan to concentrate its special forces units in Europe, at present scattered across the continent, at its base at Rota. The Spanish daily 'El Pais' reported that marine, army and air force special forces units are currently stationed in Britain, Germany and Italy. A possible regrouping of the forces at Rota was thought to have been discussed during a visit by Spanish defence minister Jose Bono to the US, the first such visit since the Socialist government came to office in 2004 and pulled its forces out of Iraq.
And perhaps some additional discussion with former president Aznar in Washington
According to 'El Pais', General James Jones, commander in chief of US forces in Europe, planned to create an "advance post" for US special forces somewhere in southern Europe to "confront the emerging threats in eastern Europe, the Caucasus and in a large part of Africa". Such a move was seen as in line with the Pentagon's decision to regroup its forces in Europe and cut back the number of its bases on the continent. The move would bring US special forces closer to Africa. Recently they have conducted manoeuvres or training missions in Morocco, Algeria and various countries in sub-Saharan Africa.
#1
I don't think it would happen, but a move worthy of Rove would be to put the Special Forces in a base in Libya. In a central location with few to no western eyes looking for American troop movements. Libya is not populated with Arabs, but descendents of Mediterranean peoples. The Arabs and the Libyans hate each other. It would be a nice poke in the Arabs eye while hiding some of what we are really doing behind the curtains.
#2
US Troops in Libya? Lol. Sure, why not? Given that he demanded we remove our troops and that little assassination tiff thingy with Khadaddy,
Abdullah would slow-burn for a decade, lol! Sweet. Might even hasten the end of the Sham Relationship. Time to turn over a few rocks, shake the palms, and bounce the rubble. Freakin' fine by me.
#3
US Troops in Libya? Lol. Sure, why not? Given that he demanded we remove our troops and that little assassination tiff thingy with Khadaffy, Abdullah would slow-burn for a decade, lol! Sweet. Might even hasten the end of the Sham Relationship. Time to turn over a few rocks, shake the palms, and bounce the rubble. Freakin' fine by me.
The National Police revealed on Monday that the alleged terrorists apprehended last week were planning to bomb the National Police and the Jakarta Police headquarters.
National Police spokesman Insp. Gen. Aryanto Boedihardjo said that a total of 17 people, arrested in Surakarta and Wonogiri in Central Java and also in Jakarta, were currently being detained under antiterror laws that allow seven days detention without charges.
"From documents that we have confiscated, we figured out that they were planning to bomb the National Police and the Jakarta Police headquarters," Aryanto said.
He said that the detainees were linked to last year's bomb blast in front of the Australian Embassy in Kuningan, South Jakarta.
"Based on our investigation, they provided detonating cable and also TNT (trinitrotoluene) for the Kuningan blast," Aryanto said.
He added that these people were also responsible for harboring Malaysian fugitives Azahari bin Husin and Noordin Mohd. Top and planning their escape route as well as giving firearms to them.
Apart from planning bombs in the city, these people were also involved in distributing guns to conflict-prone areas in the country from the south Philippines, where a military camp for terrorist training is located.
"They were also sending people to the camp in southern Philippines as well as hiding criminals in Central Sulawesi," Aryanto said.
He said that 11 of the alleged terrorists were arrested in Surakarta and its neighboring town of Wonogiri in Central Java, while the other six were apprehended in Jakarta. The figure differed from the previous report from Central Java Police that a total of 24 people were arrested.
National Police chief Gen. Da'i Bachtiar previously said that the suspected terrorists were linked to Jamaah Islamiyah (JI), which has been blamed for major terrorist attacks in Indonesia.
The police also confiscated 500 live rounds of ammunition, three ready-to-use bomb circuits and potassium chlorate (an ingredient used in bomb making) from raid operations in Central Java. They have also confiscated four firearms and 334 live bullets in Jakarta as well as documents detailing planned terrorist attacks in the country.
"We have strong indications that they were involved in terrorist attacks including other bombings apart from the Kuningan blast. We will issue arrest warrants for them as soon as the seven-day detention period is over and they will be transferred to the National Police Headquarters," Aryanto said.
However, he refused to mention their names for fear it would make their accomplices flee.
Meanwhile in Surakarta, approximately 500 Muslims from various hard-line organizations in Central Java held a protest in front of the Surakarta Police station demanding that 11 Muslim activists detained by the Police be returned to their families.
"The police only assumed they're involved in terrorist activities even though they don't have any proof," said Kholid Saifullah from the Surakarta Antikidnapping Front.
He added that the police were irresponsible and unprofessional when arresting activists and did not heed regulations.
A similar comment was also voiced by Cholid Hasan, who is a coordinator for the Surakarta Muslim Alliance. He claimed that Muslim gatherings were always spied on, hence he did not feel free to teach Islam.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
07/05/2005 17:42 ||
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The Moro Islamic Liberation Front ( MILF) has dismissed Abu Sayyaf leader Khaddafy Janjalani from their camp in Mindanao, a top Philippine army official in central Mindanao said Monday.
In an ambush interview in Camp Aguinaldo, Chief Major General of 6th Infantry Division, Agustin Dema-ala said Janjalani left the Mindanao camp after the MILF wrote him a letter last Thursday, saying he is no longer welcome in their camp.
"They are getting rid of the group of Janjalani," Dema-ala said of the MILF, which is negotiating for a peace accord with the government.
The MILF is bound to rid its relations with terrorists under a cease-fire agreement it struck with the government a couple of years ago. However, reports of MILF enshielding of terrorists continued.
"Now they sent him a letter that no JI (Jemaah Islamiyah) and Abu Sayyaf (members) are allowed to enter MILF areas," Dema-ala said.
The JI is a terrorist network which has links with both the Abu Sayyaf and the MILF. Military estimates revealed that there are at least 30 to 40 JI men operating in the Philippines.
Dema-ala said government forces have launched operations to pinpoint the whereabouts of Janjalani and his men since they left the MILF camp.
MILF spokesman Eid Kabalu, however, denied the MILF had concealed Janjalani, who is among the five top leaders of the Abu Sayyaf wanted by the US government.
While Kabalu admitted that Janjalani stayed near MILF territory in Duingolongan town, Mindanao, saying the MILF tried to drive them away.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
07/05/2005 17:35 ||
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#1
ya right! He's no longer welcome here. We sent him a letter, but he was not here, but we were able to get the letter to him, but he was never here and we don't know where he is. We don't know where he is but since we gave him the letter he left. Bagdad Bob is our new spoksman and we all smoke Shabu!
Posted by: 49 pan ||
07/05/2005 19:04 Comments ||
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The USA should evaluate it more closely - many of the younger gens of fighters want regional unification and polity with Indonesia and other islamic areas, not merely a separate Islamic state within the Philippines.
YANGON, July 4: Myanmar''s military junta may be readying to move part of their administration outside the capital to somewhere "safer", analysts and diplomats here say, reports AFP. Pyinmana, a region described by tour guides as full of "verdant charm", could become the "escape city" for top leaders, military commanders and some ministers, they said. Some suggested that the relocation inland would be aimed at warding off a potential Iraq-style invasion by the United States, one of the regime''s staunchest critics.
Several ministries are preparing to move from October to the mountainous region, about six hours north of the capital Yangon along the road to Mandalay, analysts said. "Starting in October, some ministries are going to move -- defense, agriculture and energy," one Western diplomat said. "The ministers would go there, but they would keep a presence here in Yangon with the deputy ministers," he said, noting that "this would allow another layer of screening when it comes to welcoming visiting foreigners." "These are rumors, but Myanmar bureaucrats are busy finding housing there, thinking of schools for their children," he said. "I am told that they have laid a lot of concrete."
Another observer said five ministries could move to the region which used to be a bastion of communist insurgents. "It''s been in the works for three or four years. It''s pretty well prepared," he said. The Myanmar authorities have called "for help from foreign experts, especially Russian."
Yeah, do that. It really helped Saddam.
Plans for the site call for a military base, a large hydroelectric dam at Paung Laung built with Chinese assistance, as well as tunnels, bunkers, hospitals and, of course, a golf course, observers said.
A Myanmar businessman said the government''s military headquarters could leave Yangon in the next month and set up in Pyinmana. "Some went already," he said. Government officials will neither confirm nor deny the rumors, but admit they exist. "We haven''t received any order, although rumors are widespread," an official at the home affairs ministry told AFP. The information ministry was similarly vague. An official there said simply: "We haven''t got any order nor instruction so far." Some are skeptical about the talk. "They''re building something, that''s certain, but nobody knows exactly what it''s going to be," another diplomat said. "I don''t believe part of the government will move," he said. "Either everyone moves, or no one. It wouldn''t make much sense (for only part to move)." "And this is not a move of the capital, it''s not Brasilia," he said.
Talk of an "escape city" for the generals has spread throughout Yangon.
The plan was apparently reinforced by the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, which heightened the junta''s fears of attack by the United States, analysts say. While Myanmar is not among the White House''s top foreign policy priorities, as are Iran, North Korea, Cuba or Syria, it imagines it isn''t far behind.
Take a number and wait your turn, we have a few more pressing dictators to go thru first.
Some observers believe the generals think the United States could invade by sea, which would put Yangon -- a port on the Andaman Sea -- and all the top command on the front line.
"Some people describe it (Pyinmana) as a strategic base to which they would retreat in case of an attack by sea," one analyst said.
Still haven't figured out that "strategic bases" are so last century. They just provide a better target.
Another diplomat agreed that the US-led invasion of Iraq had rattled junta leader Senior General Than Shwe.
The army has boosted its military spending in the past few years, according to experts, notably buying MiG 29s.
Please do, we have pilots who need a few kills on their performance reports to make rank.
"There''s a clear phenomenon of bunkerization," he said. "They feel threatened and have become paranoid. They think that the Americans have an Iraq-style solution" for Myanmar.
Iraq is accient history. If, and that's a big if, if we do get around to Burma, it will be something completely different.
"If all this turns out to be true, the top leaders would also go. The country functions like an army with a chain of command, and the chief of staff would move," he said.
Decapitation strike, anyone?
"The army could fall back to the north," a mountainous and forested region, "to organize a guerilla-style resistance not far from China," he said. "It''s like something from science fiction."
No, that would be the smart move. However, in order to conduct a sucessful guerilla war, you have to have local support. The Burmese regime knows they won't have that.
Posted by: Steve ||
07/05/2005 09:36 ||
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#1
Myanmar''s military junta may be readying to move part of their administration outside the capital to somewhere "safer"..
Hmmm..how about Caracas? They certainly share your world vision thingy.
#2
This is just plain weird - the paranoia, the plans to relocate the "Govt" in the mountains - the whole thing. These guys are simply loonies. Pyinmana's not far from where I used to cross over to renew my Thai visa, lol. Mebbe they think they're not getting their full cut of the fees, heh.
#4
Maybe the commie junta would like to buy a few deluxe accommodation underground bunkers made by Halliburton? Best insurance in the world.
Posted by: ed ||
07/05/2005 11:12 Comments ||
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#5
Nobody has been interested in Burma since the Brits left after WWII. Who are these guys worried about? Most in the US could give a FF about Myanmar.
#6
I don't think the US would object to them moving their headquarters out of a crowded city and into a rural area with much less risk of collateral damage with fewer people around.
In what should be considered the beginning of a battle, Syrian Security Forces affirmed that they have clashed with extremist impostors in a fight that killed one of these extremists, as well as two members of the Syrian forces. Syria has kept away from confrontations with armed fundamentalists who have targeted almost all Arab states over the past few years. There are two major reasons for this, primarily is that Syrian security has been strictly controlled and administered for a long time prohibiting these groups from setting foot on Syrian land. Secondly, is that groups such as Al-Qaeda have selected certain countries as their primary targets and has postponed others such as Syria.
However, Syria is like all its Arab counterparts as it considers such groups as political tools with whom alliance is necessary during certain points of the game. Such a belief has been demonstrated in the past as governments within the region have used many Palestinian rebel groups, communist and nationalist groups to serve its own interest. It is a shame to say that such practices are not only common but also successful in the region. However, fundamentalist groups vary in their identities because of their ability to set independent programs, which they are able to implement. Syria has joined these groups in a defiant attempt to face the Americans in Iraq. For this very reason, organized terrorist groups have used Syria as a means of access and as a financial aid to establish themselves in the political arena. However, stability cannot be guaranteed for good, as Syria has now started to slip into dangerous circumstances that most Arab countries have been experiencing.
Saudi Arabia for a long time has considered itself religiously invincible, yet the expanding communist tide of the 1980's had to be acknowledged by Saudi Arabia. Today, Syria believes that it is invincible in the sense of security, which is why Syria was more than happy to open paths and provide guides for these groups to help them in their battle against Americans in Iraq.
We end with one result, a result that is apparent from clashes that have begun to concern the Syrians. International religious organization views Syria as a potential target. Even the Muslim Brotherhood organization, despite its recent announcements of reconciliation, has one major project on their agenda. This project is altering political regimes and the transfer of power to them. Despite how long the truce period can last, the ruling project is set as the priority of their schedule, as well as the priority of their hearts and minds.
As for Al Qaeda, it perceives Syria in the same light as the majority of the other Arab states, namely, as an atheist regime that must be changed by force. Even if it seems that Syria is encouraging Al Qaeda to attack the American forces, it cannot disguise its atheist regime. The result of all this will be the violent battles that are yet to come. Syria is now being pushed into a corner, as either it will face American sanctions because of Syria's influential role in Iraq and not Lebanon, or else it will face Al Qaeda, which has demonstrated its great ability to shake the strongest of regimes, no matter how culturally or securely intact they were. The latest clashes with these terrorists means that Al Qaeda has officially begun its war against Syria after previously paying Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Algeria and Morocco a visit.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
07/05/2005 16:50 ||
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TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iran's hard-line Revolutionary Guards pledged their loyalty Tuesday to the country's ultraconservative president-elect, who called for an end to accusations that he took Americans hostage and killed a Kurdish opposition leader. The guards' welcome of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was in stark contrast to their threat four years ago to attack supporters of outgoing reformist President Mohammad Khatami if they threatened Iran's Islamic regime.
The show of support from the nation's most powerful military force came as the president-elect persisted in rejecting claims that he was among radical Iranian students who held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days during the U.S. Embassy takeover in 1979. Ahmadinejad, who won a landslide victory last month, also denies allegations by Iranian exiles and an Austrian politician of involvement in the 1989 slaying of a Kurdish opposition leader and two associates in Vienna.
``The world has to bow down and respect the will of the Iranian nation,'' the official Islamic Republic News Agency on Tuesday quoted Ahmadinejad as saying during a meeting with Foreign Ministry officials.
Hummm, no
In Vienna, Austria, Greens Party politician Peter Pilz said Tuesday that prosecutors were investigating new information from witnesses for possible links Amadinejad might have to the slaying 16 years ago of Iranian Kurdish politican Abdul-Rahman Ghassemlou. Ghassemlou, the charismatic secretary-general of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan, had traveled to Vienna for secret talks with envoys from the Tehran regime. Unofficial reports in Iran suggested that Ghassemlou was lured into the meeting to strike a deal on averting conflict with the regime and to discuss hopes for autonomy for his people. Iran has denounced the claims against Ahmadinejad as part of a smear campaign engineered by the United States and Israel against the new leader.
Brig. Gen. Rahim Safavi, head of the guards, offered more backing to the incoming president, saying his 200,000-member force - which reports directly to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei - will serve Ahmadinejad's government. ``It's necessary to declare the readiness of the green-uniform Guards and capable Basijis (hard-line vigilantes) ... to support and cooperate with Your Excellency's serving government,'' Safavi said in a congratulatory message to Ahmadinejad, state media reported Tuesday.
The vast and well-funded Revolutionary Guards are the most potent force available to the regime, are independent of the regular armed forces and have a broad mandate to confront external and domestic ``dangers'' confronting the 1979 Islamic Revolution. In 2000, the guards threatened to strike pro-Khatami reformists with ``a hammer on their skull'' if they insisted on undermining the country's Islamic ideology. Khatami's well-publicized program of democratic reform sought to protect freedoms and lessen restrictions imposed on Iran by hard-line clerics.
Posted by: Steve ||
07/05/2005 13:36 ||
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#1
Well, whaddaya expect. The hardliners supply acid to throw in their sisters'/mothers'/girlfriends'/wivess' fasces. They supply fodder for their "orgies".
BEIRUT - Shia militant group Hezbollah said on Monday that it was seeking cabinet posts for the first time in the new Lebanese government, in a move likely to complicate UN demands for its disarmament. âIt has become our right to participate directly and not just through our allies, in the decision-making process,â said Mohammed Raad, head of Hezbollahâs parliamentary bloc, which holds 14 of the legislatureâs 128 seats.
Fellow Hezbollah MP Mohammed Fneish said the movement, which was involved in deadly clashes with Israeli troops in a disputed border zone just last week,was seeking âtwo cabinet postsâ.
I have some suggestions ...
The Future Movement of the prime minister designate -- led by Saad Hariri, a Sunni Muslim -- formed some electoral deals with Hezbollah and spoke out during the campaign against disarming the âresistanceâ.
Hezbollahâs push to join the government came after Siniora abandoned efforts to woo Aoun, whose Free Patriotic Movement was the only major faction to advocate compliance with Resolution 1559, albeit through negotiations with the militant group. âIt is impossible to respond to the demands of Michel Aoun concerning the ministries that his movement would like to have,â said Siniora, who is tasked with forming the first government since the pullout of Syrian troops from Lebanon in late April.
Aounâs movement had insisted it be given the justice portfolio but Hariri rejected the call, saying his party needed to control the ministry amid the continuing inquiry into the February 14 murder of his father, the former prime minister and tycoon Rafiq Hariri. This prompted Aoun to tell Hariri that his bloc of 21 MPs, which swept the third round of Lebanonâs elections for central areas, would not be taking part in the government.
Former finance minister Siniora was named Thursday to head the first government of the post-Syria era and pledged to try to reunite the country and embark on across-the-board reforms. Siniora has made clear that another priority for the government is to uncover the truth about the assassination of Hariri and subsequent killings of an anti-Syrian journalist and a veteran communist politician.
Former general security chief Jamil Sayyed, who stood down from his post amid opposition allegations of complicity in Haririâs killing, expressed doubt in comments published Monday that the perpetrator of the huge bomb blast on the Beirut seafront would ever be found. âAccording to international exports, in an explosion as powerful as this one no trace of the bomber is left if itâs a suicide attack and DNA analysis is impossible,â Sayyed told the Saudi-owned London daily Al-Hayat.
A UN team began an inquiry into the bombing last month after a fact-finding mission found serious flaws in Lebanonâs own. It has already identified the likely vehicle used to carry the expolosives and has questioned senior officials in post at the time.
A competent UN team? A pleasant surprise. Will they be allowed to report their findings?
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/05/2005 00:00 ||
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#1
ima can barley fit em saken poetatoes in me pantree
MP Samir Franjieh accused the security and intelligence forces on Saturday of still acting under the direct authority of Syria or its symbols in Lebanon, particularly those in North Lebanon. nIn an interview with the Free Lebanon radio station, Franjieh said the goals set by the Qornet Shehwan Gathering - most notably achieving a consensus with Muslim communities on the eviction of Syrian troops from Lebanon, had been achieved. He denied allegations that "salvation came from abroad," and stressed Qornet Shehwan is a "force of communication, not a force of separation."
According to Franjieh, a clandestine Lebanese intelligence group launched campaigns against the Gathering regarding the adoption of the 2000 electoral law. "This same group adopted a policy of intimidation against Christians, the results of which were crystallized in the elections in Christian areas, as if Christian mobilization in Mount Lebanon was aimed at punishing Qornet Shehwan."
The MP said people should not be accused of treason without first taking into consideration their past and the threats and pressure they may have endured. He indicated Qornet Shehwan had initiated a dialogue with Hizbullah on March 14 in an effort to avoid sectarian mobilization and to reassure the Shiites that the country cannot be built on a tripartite basis against a fourth confession. The dialogue had also aimed at denouncing UN Security Council Resolution 1559, but also at reaching an agreement on ways to implement it in a way that protects the Lebanese.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/05/2005 00:00 ||
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Hopes that Lebanon's new government would encompass all the country's anti-Syrian opposition groupings are in ruins after Free Patriotic Movement leader Michel Aoun refused to join the new Cabinet. Speaking in a radio interview yesterday Aoun said: "The door is totally shut in the face of our participation in Cabinet, because we could not agree on the distribution of governmental portfolios."
Announcement of Aoun's decision followed a late-night meeting on Sunday with Saad Hariri, head of Lebanon's largest parliamentary bloc and opposition coalition. Aoun insisted on the FPM being given the Justice Ministry in the Cabinet, but Hariri refused, insisting that the justice portfolio would be assigned to an appointee of the Future Movement. Hariri insists on retaining control over the Justice Ministry because of its crucial role in both the local and international investigation into the assassination of his father, former Premier Rafik Hariri.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/05/2005 00:00 ||
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Offering jasmine flowers and coconuts to Hindu gods, supporters of Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger rebels paid homage to their fallen suicide bombers on Tuesday to mark the 18th anniversary of their first attack.
In the village of Sithanddhi in the eastern district of Batticaloa -- where the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) control pockets of jungle -- rebel cadres paraded images of 264 "Black Tigers" who have blown themselves up during the island's two-decade civil war.
Rebel anthems blared from loudspeakers in this government-controlled area as residents hung garlands around photographs of the bombers, some pictured in trademark black shirt, trousers and cap and others in green and black-striped fatigues.
"These suicide bombers gave their lives to protect us," said Tamil housewife Maheshwaree Kanagan. "During the war we were always scared. Now we are happy. Our children protect us," the 49-year-old added.
She refused to say whether her own children were among the Tigers, whose fight for a separate state for minority ethnic Tamils has put them alongside Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network on a U.S. list of banned terrorist groups.
The Tigers have staged mock battles in their strongholds in the north and east in past years as a tribute to the Black Tigers, who are regarded as pioneers in suicide bombing and whose attacks on the capital Colombo have been devastating.
"On July 5th, 1987, our first Black Tiger gave his life," said Ilanthiraiyan, who is now head of the Tigers' political wing in Batticaloa after his predecessor was shot dead this year.
"On that very day a new tradition in our warfare began," he added. "People worship the Black Tigers. They crack coconuts and place flowers and rice. It is a Tamil tradition."
But there was no sign of any serving Black Tigers, who rebel sources say traditionally have a last supper with reclusive leader Velupillai Prabhakaran on the eve of their attacks and who paraded in the north with belts of explosives and black hoods two years ago.
Soldiers and police looked on as cadres on motorcycles rode ahead of trucks decked out with photographs. Tiger cadres can move freely in government controlled areas for funerals, politics and home leave, under the ceasefire agreement.
"I don't think these activities fall into any of those categories," said Military spokesman Brig. Daya Ratnayake. "They must be doing it in the context of doing politics."
"But we have always been tolerating these things," he added. "We are used to it. Our soldiers won't get excited about it."
In the town of Nelliady on the Jaffna peninsular in Sri Lanka's far north, the scene was similar as Tigers prepared for a political rally with poetry reading and songs.
Nelliady was the site of the Black Tigers' first suicide bombing, when a rebel named Capt. Miller rammed a truck packed with explosives into an army camp, killing around 50 soldiers. The area is now under government control.
This year's commemoration comes less than two weeks after the Tigers and the government agreed to a landmark pact to share $3.0 billion in tsunami aid -- a deal the rebels have said could help jumpstart peace talks that stalled in 2003.
But any lasting peace deal is still likely some way off.
The Tigers last week threatened to breach the ceasefire and carry arms while traveling in government-controlled areas because of attacks against their cadres, which the government blames on feuding between mainstream rebels and a renegade faction.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
07/05/2005 17:16 ||
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A Muslim cleric who molded the militant Islamic views of al Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, sworn foe of U.S. forces in Iraq, has been freed from prison in Jordan,Islamist and security sources said on Monday.
Issam Barqawi, better known as Sheikh Abu Mohammad al-Maqdisi, 43, was released on June 28 after a six-monthdetention at intelligence headquarters following his acquittal at a trial of Jordanian and Saudi sympathizers of al Qaeda.
Political sources were uncertain what prompted the release of Maqdisi, now under close surveillance by authorities at his house near Zarqa, east of the capital, where fellow Jordanian Zarqawi was born.
"Maqdisi now has an ability to move more freely and reachout to his followers. This could pose a security risk andgalvanize fundamentalists especially since Zarqawi remains atlarge," said one official who requested anonymity.
Muslim scholars who follow Zarqawi's religious utterances on the Internet say Maqdisi's teachings have had a profound influence on the militant's mindset ever since they shared a jail cell in Jordan from 1995 to 1999.
"Zarqawi was a student of Sheikh Maqdisi, who was a source of inspiration for him in jihad (holy war)," said Mohammad Najjar, an Islamist scholar familiar with Maqdisi's background.
Both men were freed in 1999 under a general amnesty issued by Jordan's King Abdullah but Maqdisi was later detained in another case, while Zarqawi left Jordan for Afghanistan.
Some activists suggested Maqdisi's release could play a moderating role on Zarqawi, whose Tawhid and Jihad group isseen by U.S. commanders in Iraq as the deadliest threat they face following a string of bombings, kidnappings and beheadings.
The activists cited Maqdisi's letters to Zarqawi, published earlier this year on Web sites, that urged him "to avoid car bombings in public places and spare the blood of Muslim civilians as much as possible."
"The letter sought to tell Zarqawi he agreed with him in the general goal of jihad in Iraq but was against his tactics, especially car bombings," Najjar said.
Activists say the letter sought to advise Zarqawi to step up attacks on the U.S. military but avoid bombings in populated areas that eroded popular support for the insurgency.
Maqdisi, whose 19-year-old son Omar died in Iraq fighting U.S. forces, called on Zarqawi not to alienate Iraq's majority Shi'ite Muslims, only those collaborating with U.S. troops.
The Sunni fundamentalist has long been accused by U.S. military and Iraqi officials of seeking to provoke a sectarian civil war in Iraq.
"Maqdisi told Zarqawi he shouldn't widen the circle of enemies and that the battle was not with all Shi'ites but collaborators whether Sunni or Shi'ite," Najjar added.
Zarqawi was said to have responded to Maqdisi's appeal by hinting that his advice was highly valued.
Postings on Web sites affiliated to Zarqawi's group publicize Maqdisi's teachings along with his picture as a hero among jailed militants.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
07/05/2005 17:01 ||
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BLACKSBURG, Va. (AP) - A Muslim Virginia Tech student says he was the person who left a burned Quran at a local mosque last month, saying it had been damaged in a fire and he hoped it could be given a respectful disposal.
I've got a few places in mind
Police initially had said the case was being investigated as an anti-Muslim hate crime. The student contacted police last week, saying he was going to be traveling abroad and didn't know what to do with the Quran, which had been burned in a 2004 house fire, police Lt. Bruce Bradberry said Tuesday. The student said he placed the book and other fire-damaged materials in a bag and left the bag at the Islamic Center with a note, which apparently blew away. Muslims may properly dispose of a damaged Quran by respectfully burning it or shredding it, said Islamic Center director Sedki Riad. The student's name was not released.
Riad said local Muslims are relieved that anti-Islamic sentiments weren't involved. "There is nothing better than knowing that Blacksburg is what we expect it to be - a caring, friendly and supporting neighborhood," Riad told the Roanoke Times. The initial police report indicated there was more than one burned Quran, but Bradberry said it was one Quran with other burned items, including torn pages and book covers from other Arabic writings.
Posted by: Steve ||
07/05/2005 14:10 ||
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#1
I accidently ran over my Quran. 10 times. And peeled out over it. Accidently.
oops....my bad.
#5
Generals Robert E Lee, Ulysses S Grant, William Tecumseh Sherman, and dozens more and the ghosts of hundreds of thousands of American soldiers from the same era are spinning in their graves at the thought of a single mosque being anywhere on American soil let alone that of Virginia.
WASHINGTON â A contingent of conservatives talk radio hosts is headed to Iraq this month on a mission to report "the truth" about the war: American troops are winning, despite headlines to the contrary. The "Truth Tour" has been pulled together by the conservative Web cast radio group Rightalk.com and Move America Forward, a non-profit conservative group backed by a Republican-linked public relations firm in California.
"The reason why we are doing it is we are sick and tired of seeing and hearing headlines by the mainstream media about our defeat in Iraq," Melanie Morgan, a talk radio host for KSFO Radio in San Francisco and co-chair of Move America Forward, said. Morgan said the media is "imposing a Vietnam template on this war." "This is not Vietnam," she said. "War is war, and it's dangerous, and the killing is taking place all of the time. At the same time, where there is danger, there is success and there is a mainstream media that is determined to shut out that success." She said the group is going to Iraq to support American troops, who see a disconnection with what they experience and what's being reported in the United States. She said the incongruence is leading to "morale problems."
But critics, including independent journalists who have reported from Iraq, say the trip is a propaganda mission for the U.S. military and the Bush administration and cannot be considered "journalism" by any standards. "This is the most pathetic thing I've heard in a long time. They should be ashamed of themselves," Peter Beinart, editor of left-leaning The New Republic magazine, said. "They have no idea what journalism is, and to pretend they are journalists is laughable," Beinart said. "You do not achieve victory by not facing reality. I think these are the kinds of people that will lead us to lose there."
The delegation, which Morgan said is being funded by individual radio stations and the hosts themselves, will be leaving on Friday for about a week. They will be broadcasting from U.S Central Command headquarters in Baghdad's Green Zone and will be traveling with the troops daily.
The group will kick off the trip with a "Thank You BBQ" for the troops at Centcom headquarters in Tampa, Fla., before traveling to Kuwait to visit with soldiers. They will be flown from there to Iraq via military transport and will be sleeping in tents inside the secured Green Zone.
According to retired Col. Buzz Patterson, host of "The Buzz Cut" on Rightalk, the delegation of seven to 10 conservatives will also include two writers from the Web site FrontPage Magazine, which is published by David Horowitz and the Center for the Study of Popular Culture. "The war is being won, if not already won, I think," Patterson, who is retired from the U.S. Air Force, said. "[Iraq] is stabilized and we want the soldiers themselves to tell the story." The trip comes at a time when public support for the war is at its lowest ever, according to polls, and as daily insurgent attacks against U.S. and Iraqi troops have increased. The last two months have been among the most violent since the June 2004 handover of sovereignty to the new Iraqi government with more U.S. soldiers dying than in any other months except for the two preceding the January 2005 election.
"I think they are going to discover very quickly that Iraq is an extremely dangerous place," Joe Conason, editor for American Prospect magazine and author of "Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth," said. "The realities of the war zone are likely to intrude on whatever ideological disposition they have going in there." According to government statistics and aggregated news reports compiled by the Brookings Institution's Iraq Index, aside from insurgent attacks, the quality of life for Iraqis is mixed. Oil exports in June were down from the same month last year. Unemployment is only slightly better, but still high: 27 percent. Electricity in Baghdad lasts for about 9.4 hours a day â down from 10 hours a day. Lack of clean water and sewage problem, and resulting water-born illnesses, also continue to be a problem in many parts of the country, say Iraqi medical officials. Less than half of the $20 billion allocated for reconstruction projects had been disbursed as of June.
Nonetheless, more than 1 million more Iraqi children are going to school than in 2002, the index shows. Power, water and sewage projects are ongoing. Public works jobs are being created and the government infrastructure is developing, according to the U.S. Agency for International Development, a lead agency in post-war reconstruction.
"In my opinion, the mainstream media is being biased in not reporting enough of what is going on â they are not reporting the grinding situation on the ground where Iraqis are living in a state they've never lived in before," Dahr Jamail, an American freelance writer who was un-embedded in Iraq until February, said.
Mark Williams, talk show host for KFBK in Sacramento and a member of the delegation, said the group will report "what we see and what we are told," but their collective feeling is that there is mostly good. "We believe that the emphasis has been placed on the negative and if Americans knew what really was going on over there they would have an entirely different picture," said Williams. "We are Americans first and journalists second, as opposed to the crop of 'pinkos' that tell us on the news every night that America is going to hell in a hand basket," he said.
Steve Rendall, senior analyst for Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting and author of "The Way Things Aren't: Rush Limbaugh's Reign of Error," said with an attitude like that, the trip will probably be useless in terms of real news-making. He pointed out that not a single "mainstream" newspaper has editorialized in favor of a military withdrawal from Iraq and challenged the radio jocks to get any unfiltered information during their "velvet rope" treatment. "If these talk show hosts are going over there to find good news no matter what, their trip is useless," he said. "It would be laughable if it wasn't as troubling as it is when they call it 'The Truth Tour.'"
Morgan, a former television reporter, said she and the others are tired of "hotel journalists" from "the mainstream media" who "sit around in a hotel bar" cribbing other writers' quotes and clips "so they donât have to go out and cover the war." "We are not going to engage in hotel journalism," she said. "If that's what they are going to do, than my hat would be off to them, but that would mean they would have to go around, un-embedded, without military escort," Jamail who runs a Web blog and has written for the BBC, Asia Times and The Nation, said. "That would mean talking to ordinary Iraqis."
Rendall said that such a pro-Bush administration mission might be inappropriately supported by taxpayer money, considering the delegation will be hosted on bases and brought over on military transport. "If they were actually reporters out to tell the story, good, bad, warts and all, than it wouldn't be entirely objectionable," he said. "But if they are acting entirely as government propagandists, which seems to be the case here, it's improper." Rendall noted it "bears comparison to the Armstrong Williams and the other instances" of government payment for good news, referring to conservative talk show host Williams, who was paid by the Department of Education to pump up school choice on his radio show in 2004. The radio hosts balked at the suggestion.
"We're paying our own accommodations. My wife and I are paying $15,000 for this trip," Williams said. "We're cargo. We're given a smelly cot and the same accommodations as the troops. Basically, all the U.S. military is doing for us is letting us pay our own trip into war." The talk show hosts say more of the successes must be told and the troops need to know that Americans see the positive things they are allowing to happen in Iraq. "If we see things that aren't going well, sure we're talk show hosts, we'll talk about it," Patterson said. "But there has been no balance. I'm concerned that there are all of these positive things not being reported."
Posted by: Steve ||
07/05/2005 11:27 ||
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#1
Nice to see the talk show people going over. And of course the LLL are crying 'cause people might actually hear what is going on instead of the normal defeatest bullshit.
#2
Couple of my favorite people on this tour (Williams and Morgan). Both are straight shooters and that says volumes about how the left is acting. They are denouncing that outcome before itâs been reported. So if they return with stories of schools opening, hospitals running, and happy campers that canât possibly be right. I know that everything is not right in Iraq but I donât think EVERYTHING is wrong as reported in the press today. At best it might guilt some of the âjournalistsâ to report something other than the body count this month. Yes terrorists are killing people but that is not the only thing happening in Iraq. Look for the spin control (and volume) from the MSM and LLL on this to rise as the reports start rolling in. Look for ABC/NBC/CBS/CNN/MSNBC/EIEIO to start reporting on stories other than combat related. In fact I saw a story on CNN yesterday about a Political Science school that had opened in Baghdad. This was on a prime Bush-Bashing day (A patriotic national holiday) that is normally reserved for politicians/LLL groups crying about how the world hates us.
#3
One of the things talk show hosts can do is interview the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, those trying to rebuild the two countries, as well as the knowledgeable reporters living with the troops (hint: Michael Yon). Get the first hand experiences of these people to their listening audiences. It shouldn't be difficult for the hosts can set up these phone interviews and the DoD should encourage it.
Posted by: ed ||
07/05/2005 12:17 Comments ||
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#4
"Waaah! It's gonna be too crowded in the hotel bar!"
#5
I see it as more of an anti-propaganda mission.
I, for one, would like to hear a story by someone who has "no idea what journalism is.." Might be refreshing!
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/05/2005 12:49 Comments ||
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#6
Cincinnati-based host (with a national weekend show) Mike McConnell went a couple of months ago. He came back with some interesting stories (like the phone jack inside one of Saddam's palaces that acts like a domestic line into the US) and a point I heard him beating the anti-war nuts with this weekend: The men on the ground say we're doing the right thing, so why do you say you're speaking for them when you call for us to leave?
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
07/05/2005 13:00 Comments ||
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Ah, but not all of the troops think we're doing the right thing! The MSM must have interviewed most - maybe all - of them.
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/05/2005 13:12 Comments ||
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#8
Two comments removed for lack of taste, posters were not banned, however. Let's keep it clean, please.
Posted by: Steve ||
07/05/2005 16:44 Comments ||
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#9
Huh? What happened? Sheesh, I missed it, I guess.
#11
All these pinko, fudge packing "journalists" who are already calling this trip propaganda and dissing these folk need to have the hell beat out of them. I am sick of these rich east coast snobs running our counrty it's military and president down.
Message to Peter Beinart get youself a body guard. Some fed up human is going to pound your arse into the pavement you treasonus puke.
Posted by: Mountain Man ||
07/05/2005 17:43 Comments ||
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Hey, CyberSarge!
I listen to Lee and Melanie every morning on the drive into Berkeley. She was fired up about these base lies this morning, I gotta' tell ya'.
Melanie Morgan is footing a substantial dollar cost of this trip (KSFO's picking up only a portion of the tab), and (Mark?) Williams is reportedly spending $15k of his own money.
Frikkin' idiot leftist morons think the only reason anyone would go to Iraq is to support the "Bush Agenda". They have no concept that real Americans might actually want to go there and show support for our troops (or to get a story from a real, not-from-your-LLL-journalist-hotel-bar-partner, journalist).
July 5, 2005: Seeing American land and naval forces in the nations of North Africa is becoming more common. All of these nation, even Libya, are eager to get American aid in fighting local Islamic terrorists. Morocco has, in effect, allowed American warships to base themselves in Moroccan ports. Other countries have American military trainers and advisors coming and going regularly. It is assumed that American intelligence organizations are working closely with those in North African nations as well. This effort is apparently having an impact, as terrorist incidents in North Africa are declining, and known North African Islamic terrorists are showing up in other parts of the worlds, particularly Europe and Iraq. Libya is still thought to harbor some senior officials who want to assist Islamic terrorists. Officially, Libya is against Islamic terrorism, but the situation there is murky.
Posted by: Steve ||
07/05/2005 09:26 ||
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#1
Morocco is probably still proud about being the first to recognize the new county of the U.S. of A. and having the longest diplomatic relations - or something like that. Fairly progressive - when I was there in 1978 about half the women in Rabat wore the veils, the other (generally younger) half wore jeans. The Casablana airport was an old B-52 base. In Rabat, the French-built airport's runway pointed right at the King's palace, and was closed - probably the day the Frogs left!
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/05/2005 11:35 Comments ||
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Gotta figure Morocco recognized not only the US, but that the US was no longer under the protection of the British fleet.
#5
According to the State Department, "Moroccans recognized the Government of the United States in 1777. Formal U.S. relations with Morocco date from 1787, when the two nations negotiated a Treaty of Peace and Friendship. Renegotiated in 1836, the treaty is still in force, constituting the longest unbroken treaty relationship in U.S. history." So I was thinking of the treaty relationship.
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/05/2005 13:08 Comments ||
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#6
That was a salute to the flag .com. Which I guess was defacto recognition of status quo. The governor was brought back to the Netherlands to explains his action tho.... he said dough. The proprietors general said Ray Me. :) The act did help in dragging the Dutch Republic into the war and the mere sight of St. Estasius (?) acted like red meat in front of olde Admiral Rodney. But I digress.....
#8
I was wondering if you would eschew dissembling. All you had to do was say, "Yep, PD nailed it". Sigh. Oh well, my work here is done. I'm taking my book and leaving. Barb was the bestest. I miss her. *sniff* Um, get yer foot off my cape. Away!
There was never a doubt that the dark days of the 80s and the early 90s in Punjab had left a residue that will take forever to be wiped out. Yet, when the Delhi Police arrested Jagtar Singh Hawara on June 8 in connection with the blasts in two movie halls in the capital last month, the Punjab Police was first embarrassed and then stunned. What came out of the interrogation and raids across Punjab was no small residue. Hawara, the main accused in the Beant Singh assassination case and chief of Indian operations of the Babbar Khalsa International, had apparently planned to do much more. Punjabâs director-general of police, S.S. Virk, said Hawaraâs men were possibly planning to abduct VIPs and secure his release. The news of Hawaraâs arrest was in itself a shocker for the Punjab Police. But their faces turned red when they realised that Hawara had spent most of the past 18 months right under their noses: marrying a girl in Ludhiana district; visiting a woman in Hoshiarpur district; setting up home in Patiala district; and hobnobbing with fellow-conspirators in Nawanshahar district. Within a fortnight of Hawaraâs arrest, anti-terrorist squads in the districts caught 24 Babbar Khalsa members and seized huge caches of explosives.
The police saw a smart pattern in the way the Babbars were regrouping and recruiting the youth. They were no more the hardcore fundamentalists. Shorn of orthodoxy and dogma, the new age Babbars sported trimmed beards and short hair, and had Hindu buddies working with them. They were no longer from the rural base and the hideouts were in the cities. Unlike the illiterate ones who carried AK-47s in the 80s, they were educated with a modern outlook. In fact, they wanted to be paid overseas for the work done here. Liberal funds from abroad, made available through the hawala route, meant they did not have to demand protection money or ransom at gunpoint. According to Virk, Hawara got Rs 50 lakh in the one year after his escape.
Hawara and his men lured the youth promising a one-way journey to Europe or North America. That probably explains why even Hindus and women joined him. Though there is not a visible groundswell of support for the Babbar Khalsa, the police think the numbers may come as a surprise. Their dependence on Pakistan continues. "There are just two or three trainers and five or six getting trained at a time, but there are small bases in Pakistan," said Virk. Khalistan is no longer the goal, though it may be the dream of some politicians. But it is definitely the nine-letter word that gets them dollars.
Posted by: Paul Moloney ||
07/05/2005 05:00 ||
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JERUSALEM - Israel renewed its attack on the European Union on Monday for opening contacts with Hamas, saying even low-level talks legitimised the radical Palestinian organisation which is on an EU terror blacklist.
Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom said any talks with the movement -- behind the bulk of anti-Israeli attacks during the Palestinian uprising -- were unacceptable. âAny European government or organisation which maintains even low-level contacts with Hamas must know that they are speaking with and according legitimacy to an organisation which is seeking the destruction of the state of Israel,â he said in a statement following talks with his Romanian counterpart Razvan Ungureanu.
Which, unfortunately, is the European position.
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, whose country has just assumed the revolving presidency of the European Union, recently revealed that London had held talks with newly elected Hamas mayors. Straw said, however, that Hamas would remain designated a terrorist organisation until it turned its back on violence and ceased âseeking the destruction of Israelâ.
The EU special envoy to the Middle East, Marc Otte, also acknowledged contacts with Hamas last week, saying that they had been limited to mayors, community leaders and private citizens.
"People of no account, people with only one AK-47, people who pay full retail for their grenades, you know, low-level contacts," Mr. Otte added.
Shalom has previously said that talks with Hamas would undermine peace efforts.
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/05/2005 00:00 ||
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#1
Can't become an alternative superpower. Can't have a viable economy. Can't even convince the populace to accept the EU constitution.
Can work toward the solution of the Jewish Problem.
A newly named spokesman for two Iraqi insurgent groups yesterday asked the US Congress to make an "official" offer for negotiations with Washington, according to an interview broadcast on Al-Jazeera television. "We will accept nothing but an official initiative from the US Congress with a precise timetable and a binding decision. Let this be clear," Ibrahim Youssef al-Shammari said, speaking on behalf of the Islamic Army in Iraq and the Army of the Mujahedeen.
An unverified statement posted on the Internet in the name of the two insurgent groups announced the appointment of Shammari as joint spokesman following Washington's admission it had held talks with rebel representatives. Asked if secret negotiations had begun between rebels and US authorities in Iraq in an attempt to negotiate an end to the insurgency, Shammari denied any dialogue with US forces but was less clear as to whether unofficial contacts had been made. "I deny the existence of a dialogue... All initiatives on these negotiations will be done according to our political program... and no contact of this kind has taken place directly or indirectly with the Americans," he said to the Qatar-based channel.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/05/2005 00:00 ||
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#1
terrorist negotiations? We've been too nice to these guys.
Posted by: Jan ||
07/05/2005 0:05 Comments ||
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"We will accept nothing but an official initiative from the US Congress with a precise timetable..."
Hokay. How about a Joint Resolution which says "Surrender now or die"? Clear enough?
#4
Bullshit. This is just the latest idiot meme. The symps and tools pick it up and repeat it in hopes of weakening resolve. Effectively, it's a logic virus: a self-replicating circle-jerk of idiotarian brain farts designed to legitimize a meme. The meme grows in the tiny minds of fools who listen to sources like arabnews and think repetition equals truth.
#8
"We will accept nothing but an official initiative from the US Congress with a precise timetable..."
Has Kerry been in France lately?
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
07/05/2005 7:47 Comments ||
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They are just following san fran nan's and harry reid's lead ("We want a timetable and now!"). I do agree with SteveS, though, I read this as a good sign...we got 'em on the ropes. Now, just finish 'em off!
Posted by: BA ||
07/05/2005 9:06 Comments ||
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I think Abdullah's intentions are good, but he can't come up with anything better than an occasional dish of warm milk on this subject in public. Of course, we have little idea what's going on behind the scenes. He's obviously not dumb enough to actually believe what he's dishing up...
Jordanâs King Abdallah yesterday lashed out at extremists who he said were harming the image of Islam, urging a unification of the religionâs disparate schools of thought to create greater moral clarity.
Yeah. They need a pope. Look how well it worked for the Christians...
âActs of violence and terrorism practiced by some groups and organizations ... do not correspond to the principles and spirit of Islam,â the king said as he opened an international conference aimed at improving Islamâs image. The Jordanian monarch singled out âwhat is going on in Iraq, Pakistan and other Muslim countries in the form of accusations of apostasy and the killing of Muslims in the name of Islamâ.
We kinda take that as representative of the religion here at Rantburg, and tend to regard the places that don't explode as the exceptions...
King Abdallah told the 180 clerics and scholars that such acts contributed to harsh criticism from the West against Islam, particularly since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States claimed by the Al-Qaeda network. âSuch practices generate turmoil and corruption on earth because they give justification to non-Muslims to judge Islam according to acts that Islam disavows, and subsequently interfere in Muslim affairs,â he said.
See, there's where he falls down the intellectual stairs. I'd phrase that as "because they give justification to non-Muslims to judge Islam according to its acts, rather than its (occasional) words, and forces it to interfere in Muslim affairs as a matter of self-preservation."
He urged delegates representing the eight Islamic schools of jurisprudence attending the three-day conference to unify their message and ensure that fatwas, or religious edicts, are not issued haphazardly. âAcknowledgement of the schools of jurisprudence within Islam would permit the emergence of a fundamental methodology in the issues of fatwas and the definition of who is qualified for this undertaking,â the king said. âThis, with Godâs will, would end the practice of defaming others as apostates and close the door on ignorant people who practice killing and terrorism â of which Islam is innocent â in the name of Islam,â Abdallah said.
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07/05/2005 00:00 ||
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It's hard for muslim political leaders to look in the mirror let alone speak honestly about what is there to be seen. Until such time as they can and do, their people will be doomed to suffer the suffocating burdens of ignorance, excessive pride, intolerance, jealousy and hatred. Try as he might to dance around the situation, Abdullah can't or will not call it for what it is. He's not idiot but he seems unable to move beyond what he was born into.
Hamas yesterday rebuffed an invitation to join the Palestinian Cabinet, snubbing President Mahmoud Abbas who wants a unity government to help him control Gaza after Israel's pullout. Abbas, facing public pressure to curb growing lawlessness in Palestinian areas, last week offered a place for armed groups in his government to foster a smooth evacuation of Israeli settlers from the occupied territory due to begin in mid-August. "Forming a unity government at this late time will not be useful," said Hamas spokesman Mushir Al-Masri.
He said Hamas had not yet made a formal decision, but considered the invitation a ploy to avoid a commitment to hold quick elections for Parliament in which Hamas is poised to mount a serious challenge to Abbas' Fatah movement. Bringing in Hamas, a grassroots organization commanding considerable sway in the Gaza Strip, would help Abbas keep order during the pullout and avoid a security vacuum afterward. Islamic Jihad rejected the proposal outright.
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Abbas, facing public pressure to curb growing lawlessness in Palestinian areas, last week offered a place for armed groups in his government to foster a smooth evacuation of Israeli settlers from the occupied territory due to begin in mid-August.
Well, Mr. Mazen, here's an idea: decriminalize murder and assault, and there won't be as much lawlessness!
Yeah, that makes about as much sense as.....offering government jobs to terrorists.
Talks aimed at forging a cease-fire between ex-rebels and Khartoum-backed militias in southern Sudan have failed ahead of this week's scheduled formation of a North-South unity government, officials are saying. The collapse of the weekend talks is likely to cast a pall over Saturday's ceremonial installation of a unity government in Khartoum under a January peace deal which will see John Garang, leader of the former rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A), sworn in as vice president.
But while unable to reach an agreement, Garang and the southern Sudan militia chiefs did agree to continue with talks which are being mediated by retired Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi, the officials said. The weekend meeting in the Kenyan capital had been aimed at convincing the militias to halt attacks, mostly in Sudan's Upper Nile region, and bring them into the peace pact signed between the SPLM/A and Khartoum in January in Nairobi. "The meeting ended well on Sunday, but without key agreements," a senior SPLM/A official said. "The only thing that was agreed was to continue these talks inside Sudan."
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I've cast a net and even castanets, but never cast a pall.
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.
An official source from the Saudi Ministry of Interior confirmed that there is no evidence or concrete information regarding the deaths of any of the 36 most wanted terrorists. The statement was made in response to announcements made by the parents of some wanted terrorists that their sons had been killed abroad. 
Crown Prince Abdullah yesterday lashed out at terrorists who try to undermine the Kingdom's security and stability and said the government was determined to finish them off and drive them from their hide-outs. "We will continue with our campaign to wipe out the deviant group (Al-Qaeda) and exterminate the roots of terrorism and terrorists who target the nation's security and safety," the Saudi Press Agency quoted him as saying. The crown prince commended the security forces for the good work and said their âgreat sacrificesâ had helped the country eliminate a large number of terrorists and prevented many terrorist attacks. He also praised the cooperation extended by Saudis and expatriates to security officers.
The Basque region's prime minister claimed the central Spanish government had started peace talks with the outlawed Batasuna party, the political wing of the violent separatist group ETA. In an interview published on Sunday in the Basque newspaper Deia, Juan José Ibarretxe said that both his government and the Socialist administration in Madrid "are already in dialogue with Batasuna", the British daily The Guardian reported. The newspaper added that Ibarretxe also claimed "a final resolution" to the conflict in the Basque region "will only be possible without violence". 
Hopes that Lebanon's new government would encompass all the country's anti-Syrian opposition groupings are in ruins after 
A newly named spokesman for two Iraqi insurgent groups yesterday asked the US Congress to make an "official" offer for negotiations with Washington, according to an interview broadcast on Al-Jazeera television. "We will accept nothing but an official initiative from the US Congress with a precise timetable and a binding decision. Let this be clear," 
Jordanâs 
Talks aimed at forging a cease-fire between ex-rebels and Khartoum-backed militias in southern Sudan have failed ahead of this week's scheduled formation of a North-South unity government, officials are saying. The collapse of the weekend talks is likely to cast a pall over Saturday's ceremonial installation of a unity government in Khartoum under a January peace deal which will see John Garang, leader of the former rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A), sworn in as vice president.
