Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal said he has been warning top US government officials that Iraq is rapidly heading toward disintegration and there is the risk of a regional war. Speaking to reporters at the Saudi Embassy in Washington, Prince Saud said he was so worried he is warning âeveryone who will listenâ in the Bush administration. âThere is no dynamic now pulling the nation together,â the prince said. Iraqâs potential division into a Kurdish state in the north, a Sunni state in the center and a Shiite state in the south would âbring other countries in the region into the conflict,â he explained.
Turkey has long threatened to forcefully prevent Iraqâs Kurds from declaring independence. Shiite Iran could increase its influence in Iraq, where it already enjoys strong sympathy in the Shiite-majority government. âThis is a very dangerous situation,â he said. Prince Saud blamed much of Iraqâs ills on US decisions such as designating âevery Sunni as a Baathist criminal.â While the prince did not refer to the Bush administration directly, he was referring to an order issued by US proconsul Paul Bremer soon after the 2003 fall of Saddam Hussein. Bremer banned all members of Saddamâs largely Sunni Arab Baath Party from holding government jobs.
Prince Saud said he did not believe Iraq was engulfed in full-scale civil war but the trend was moving in that direction. Asked what Saudi Arabia feared most about the trend, Saud said, âIt will draw the countries of the region into the conflict and that is the main worry of all the neighbors of Iraq.â
Posted by: Fred ||
09/24/2005 00:00 ||
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Does someone need to point out one way in which he could help ease the problem?
#2
If it brings the Republic of Eastern Arabia closer, it's a winner for me.
Posted by: Tony (UK) ||
09/24/2005 0:33 Comments ||
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Saud Warns Hopes of Regional Conflict If Iraq Situation Persists
There, that's better.
Accuracy is important, you know....
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
09/24/2005 0:34 Comments ||
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Well most mideast countries are constructs of European design. Having some border disolve and move my be the nature of the game. If the House of Saud is worreid about it they can cut off the flow of money amd men. It's not that hard.
Bahrain has decided to end its boycott of Israeli goods, diplomats said here yesterday. According to the diplomats, Bahrain's move followed the signing of a free trade agreement between Washington and Manama in September 2004.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/24/2005 00:00 ||
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Score one for Al-Jazeera. The Doha-based news channel has hired Josh Rushing, a former US Marine captain who was the military's lead spokesman to Arabs during the Iraq invasion, to join its roster of on-air talent. Rushing was a central figure in last year's documentary Control Room, about how Al-Jazeera and the US networks covered the invasion. After the film was released, the Pentagon ordered Rushing not to speak about it, prompting him to resign after 14 years in the forces.
Rushing is not shy about commenting now. Untethered to the Pentagon and Donald Rumsfeld - who once accused Al-Jazeera of being "willing to lie to the world to make their case" - Rushing is now a critic of both his former employer and the US news media. "I witnessed during the war how the US media was co-opted by the US government's messaging," Rushing said. "I am proud to be part of a news network that believes in the power of the un-spun truth."
Posted by: G. ||
09/24/2005 00:00 ||
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Yet another disgruntled lad who pees on the pant leg of the US
Posted by: Captain America ||
09/24/2005 1:00 Comments ||
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I bet he never goes to a Corps birthday formal.
Posted by: 49 pan ||
09/24/2005 15:19 Comments ||
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maybe he gets second pick after Scott Ritter?
Posted by: Frank G ||
09/24/2005 16:31 Comments ||
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The young widow of a 7 July suicide bomber told Friday how she "totally abhorred" her husband's deadly actions. Samantha Lewthwaite described in an interview with the popular newspaper The Sun how Jermaine Lindsay tenderly kissed their young son goodbye before leaving on his lethal mission. She said she believed his mind had been poisoned by visits to radical mosques in London, Luton, southern England, and northern England. Lindsay, 19, blew himself up on a Piccadilly Line train between King's Cross and Russell Square stations in the worst of the suicide attacks on London on July 7, killing himself and 26 others.
He was one of four bombers who carried out attacks on the British capital that day. But his 21-year-old widow, who gave birth to the couple's second child after the atrocities, told the paper she believed her partner could not have left without saying farewell to their toddler, Abdullah. She told The Sun she believes she heard him on the stairs of their home in Buckinghamshire, near London, "I feel sure he couldn't have gone through with it without seeing him one last time. He kissed our child goodbye and then crept off to blow up King's Cross. In the morning I found he'd left the keys on a table downstairs. He obviously had no more use for them."
The couple, both converts to Islam, met over the internet and married in 2002 when, she said, he had been a "peaceful man who loved people." But Lindsay, who used the Muslim name Jamal, changed after they moved from Huddersfield, northern England, to Aylesbury, outside London, and took to disappearing for days on end, visiting mosques around the country. She had assumed he was at a mosque that fateful Thursday, but said when police interviewed her and showed her close-circuit TV footage of her husband, her "world collapsed." She gave birth to their daughter, Ruqayyah, this month.
One day, she said, she would have to tell their children what he had done "Jamal is accountable for his actions 100 percent and I condemn with all my heart what he has done. I will try to remember for my children's sake the Jamal I loved and raise them knowing their father was a man who truly loved them. But the day will come when I'll have to tell them what he did," she concluded.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/24/2005 00:00 ||
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Jamal is accountable for his actions 100 percent and I condemn with all my heart what he has done.
Day-yum! No excuses? No "root causes"?
Maybe there's hope....?
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
09/24/2005 0:10 Comments ||
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They met on the internet? That dating site needs scrutiny. I can see his posting now. Turn ons: "burquas, car bombs, welfare checks", Turn offs: "integration into civilized society."
PARIS - Six men detained on Monday in northern Paris suburbs on suspicion of recruiting fighters for the anti-US insurgency in Iraq have been released without charge, French officials said on Friday. The men, aged between 20 and 25, were set free overnight after four days of questioning at the headquarters of Franceâs domestic intelligence agency, the Directorate for Territorial Surveillance (DST).
No names, of course, but they weren't Jacques, Pierre, Michal, Phillippe, Gastone and Dominique.
Ninety-six hours is the maximum that terrorism suspects can be held in France before being taken before a judge.
French officials believe there is a steady but so far limited movement of French nationals to join insurgents in Iraq, where they estimate six have died in suicide-bombings and clashes with US forces. In Iraq, the US military said on Friday it had captured a Tunisian national who was recruited from a mosque in France to fight with the insurgents.
Posted by: Steve White ||
09/24/2005 00:47 ||
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Then Frenchie should have no basis for complaint when these recruits return from Iraq to go boom at home.
Posted by: Captain America ||
09/24/2005 1:03 Comments ||
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The two immigrants left Europe for Iraq, the new land of jihad. Then, police say, they brought the jihad back with them.
In June, anti-terrorism police in this Mediterranean university town arrested Hamid Bach after dawn prayers and allegedly found bomb-making materials in the spacious, government-subsidized apartment where the Moroccan lived with his family. Bach confessed that he had set off to fight in Iraq but instead came home with orders to help carry out a bombing in Italy, police say.
The call to battle reached Wesam Delaema in Amersfoort, a medieval Dutch town where he was captured in May in a raid that turned up homemade propaganda videotapes of a remarkable odyssey. The Iraqi had driven his Opel Omega from Amersfoort more than 2,500 miles to his native Fallouja. A video showed him with masked fighters planting explosives to ambush an American convoy, say U.S. prosecutors, who won an indictment against him this month.
Bach and Delaema came from unexpected hotbeds of holy war: small, provincial cities that epitomize the comfort and serenity that draw immigrants to Western Europe. But stories like theirs are spreading across the continent.
In early 2003, extremists started moving fighters from Europe to Iraq, raising fears of what would happen if and when they came back. Now militants are beginning to return with combat experience, guerrilla-war skills, ideological fervor and leadership status, European and U.S. officials say.
"It's a huge concern," said a U.S. counter-terrorism official who had been in contact with European counterparts. Like others interviewed, the official asked not to be named for security reasons. "It's at the top of the agenda. Everyone's working on the returnees. What are they doing? Who are they?"
Early this year, U.S. intelligence agents issued an alert that Abu Musab Zarqawi, whose network is believed to extend far beyond Iraq, had dispatched teams of battle-hardened operatives to European capitals. Although the London transit bombings in July apparently did not involve Iraq veterans, they were the first suicide attacks in Western Europe â a grim precedent that might encourage others.
Iraq has become a superheated, real-world academy for lessons about weapons, urban combat and terrorist tradecraft, said Thomas Sanderson of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
Extremists in Iraq are "exposed to international networks from around the world," said Sanderson, who has been briefed by German security agencies. "They are returning with bomb-making skills, perhaps stolen explosives, vastly increased knowledge. If they are succeeding in a hostile environment, avoiding ⊠U.S. Special Forces, then to go back to Europe, my God, it's kid's play."
Experts estimate that several hundred extremists from Europe have gone to Iraq. They are believed to be a mix of immigrants and European-born militants. The ranks of foreign fighters are still dominated by Saudis and other Arabs.
Estimates of returning Islamic fighters tend to be even more elusive.
A Dutch intelligence official estimated that 10 to 20 had returned to the Netherlands. German agents have detected at least 50, Sanderson said, including members of a Munich cell charged with helping wounded fighters travel to Europe for treatment. In the Montpellier case, Bach accompanied a veteran of a previous combat stint, one of a handful of suspected Iraq veterans in France.
As Delaema's story reveals, Europe has become a base for recruitment, propaganda, finance and logistics.
Networks in Europe are in frequent, direct communication with insurgents in Iraq. During the two-week ordeal of two Italian humanitarian workers kidnapped in Baghdad in 2004, extremists in Italy assisted the abductors by phone, giving updates and analyses of the Rome government's response, an Italian intelligence official said.
European counter-terrorism investigators, with the close assistance of U.S. agencies, have focused on blocking the flow to and from the war zone. Among increasingly fractured Islamic cells that often operate autonomously, fighters fresh from the front lines are prime candidates for organizing plots, just as veterans of previous conflicts once were.
"Iraq has become the new Chechnya, the new Afghanistan," a top French law enforcement official said. "The concern is that they go, they fight, they come back and they do operations in Europe."
Like thousands of "graduates" of Afghan training camps, they are a moving target. Itinerant fighters cover their tracks. In countries with strong civil rights safeguards, it remains difficult to prosecute someone for participating in a foreign conflict or even training with militants overseas.
The Delaema case, laid out in court documents filed in Washington, illustrates the obstacles. Dutch investigators had wiretapped him, according to court documents, and he provided hard evidence against himself in the videotapes that he filmed in Iraq and distributed among extremists in the Netherlands, officials say.
But the Dutch had become worried that they could not keep him in custody when U.S. authorities hurriedly sought charges under laws covering crimes against Americans overseas. A grand jury in Washington indicted Delaema Sept. 9 â the first U.S. criminal case filed against a suspect accused of insurgent violence in Iraq.
Delaema, 32, was born in Fallouja, according to U.S. court documents. He moved to the Netherlands in the 1990s, said Wim de Bruin, a spokesman for prosecutors. Delaema obtained a Dutch passport and worked as a hairdresser. He learned Dutch well enough to appear as a contestant on the Dutch equivalent of "The Price Is Right," officials say.
Delaema returned to his homeland out of nationalism more than religious zealotry, investigators say.
As the insurgency heated up in October 2003, he trekked across Eastern Europe and Turkey to Iraq in his Dutch-registered Omega, officials say. A fellow Iraqi immigrant who appears in video footage of the trip has also been jailed, De Bruin said.
In Fallouja, Delaema narrated the ambush videotape, explaining the masked militants' tactics and displaying a remote-controlled mine, the documents say.
"Delaema gave a speech in Arabic in which he said that they were the 'Fighters of Fallouja,' " the documents say. "Delaema [said] that they will attack the Americans that day. Delaema claimed that they have done many attacks and that they were successful."
Delaema allegedly made half a dozen trips to Iraq, but investigators are certain of only one trip by car.
Back in Amersfoort, he busied himself with propaganda, recruitment and logistics for the insurgency, the indictment says. Wiretaps recorded phone conversations in which he encouraged fighters in Iraq to film attacks and send him the footage. He allegedly discussed providing camera equipment to them and raising money for relatives of a slain "martyr."
Dutch justice officials will have to decide whether to try him on Dutch charges or allow his extradition to the United States.
Although police found no sign that Delaema planned attacks in Europe, French authorities say they aborted a gathering threat in Montpellier.
The 35-year-old Bach was born in Khemisset, Morocco, and has a wife and three children. He worked part-time as a truck driver and lived in La Paillade, an outlying district that the municipal government of this cheerful, youthful city has striven to keep from becoming a slum.
Maintenance crews were recently at work sprucing up the verdant, sun-splashed street of the housing project where the family lives, near a day-care center, City Hall branch and police substation. Gleaming blue commuter trams glided past a high-ceilinged market offering meat prepared in accordance with Muslim guidelines and counters heaped with figs, dates, olives and apricots. Outside, stands were brimming with discount clothes and appliances. Men sipped tea and chatted in Arabic at a cluster of cafe tables in the center of the bustling market.
Bach was active in the fundamentalist Salafist movement, investigators say. After the U.S.-led invasion toppled Saddam Hussein, Bach took part in meetings around Montpellier at which North Africans said the time had come to defend Islam in Iraq, sources close to the case say.
"You had the whole ideological palette represented at the meetings, from reasonable to rather romantic to violent," said one of the sources. "Bach says that he decided after the invasion of Iraq he could no longer be a spectator. It was his duty as a Muslim to go and fight."
Bach became part of a small group led by Hamza Safi, a fellow Moroccan who had fought in Iraq in 2003, French and Italian investigators say. After returning to Montpellier, Safi remained in phone contact with an insurgent leader in Iraq who had been responsible for numerous deaths there, investigators say.
Safi and Bach traveled to Aleppo, Syria, in June 2004. They stayed with a militant identified as Mohammed whose role was to get them to an insurgent training facility in Iraq, officials say. Most of the approximately 30 militants known to have left France for Iraq went via Syria, often spending time at Koranic schools there that serve as way stations and provide cover stories, a senior French intelligence official said.
Mohammed told Bach to carry out a suicide bombing in the combat zone, say investigators, who describe it as an example of militant leaders' quick, efficient screening of recruits.
Confronted with the idea of dying for the cause, however, Bach lost his nerve. He refused, according to his confession. The operative in Aleppo responded by telling Bach he could do his part by carrying out an attack in France, investigators say. Bach said he objected again but finally agreed when Mohammed ordered him to help extremists plot a bombing in Italy.
"He was told, go back and our brothers in Italy will contact you," a senior Italian counter-terrorism official said.
The case suggests that, in addition to overseeing the insurgency, masterminds in Iraq and Syria are trying to direct operations against Western targets. The threat seems particularly serious in Italy after strikes against Britain in July and against Spain last year. These nations were targeted at least partly because of their presence in Iraq, and Italy is a member of the U.S.-led coalition there.
"The Italians are very fearful because they have troops" in Iraq, the French intelligence official said. "And they are right to be concerned."
Safi kept going to Iraq, where he may have died in combat, investigators say. Bach denies crossing the border, but investigators suspect he may have reached the northern Iraqi city of Mosul before turning around.
In any case, Bach's return to Montpellier unknowingly landed him in the middle of a full-fledged surveillance operation. Police had detected his network thanks to an informant's tip alerting them to the phone conversations between extremists here and in Iraq, officials say.
Police shadowed Bach for some time before arresting him and finding suspected bomb components in his apartment, including electronic circuits, diagrams and 19 containers of oxygenated water, a frequent ingredient in homemade explosives. Bach does not deny that he set out for Iraq to kill Americans, sources close to the case say. But they add that he now says parts of his confession were extracted under duress during a grueling, four-day interrogation process.
He said he stockpiled the oxygenated water as part of medical supplies for charities in Morocco. And he asserted that, during the eighth interrogation, he said what police wanted to hear because they threatened to jail his wife and turn his children over to a welfare agency.
His wife, Achlougi, denied in a June newspaper interview that her husband was capable of violence. But her words seethed with the kind of rage that may be propelling immigrants to Iraq and back again.
"When one sees what is going on [in Iraq], one is furious, one feels hate," she told the Midi Libre newspaper. "We are free to say we feel hatred for the Americans. Afghanistan, tomorrow Syria, after that Iran, that's enough. Something has to happen."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
09/24/2005 00:28 ||
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To bad Europe will not wake up and realize it all about the religion. The choice of the Europeans to blame us for doing something when they are doing nothing make me feel I should hate them as much as I do the terrorists. Blame my country if you want but when the backlash comes I hope you are left gnashing your teeth and lamenting your treason to your own culture.
#3
No Muslims equals no terror. If the Euros get hit hard enough they'll begin to realize that. Mass deportations are the way to go and the sooner the better. Let the jihadis see how they like things back in the Maghreb or Syria.
Posted by: mac ||
09/24/2005 9:59 Comments ||
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Stupid Muzzies don't understand that they only supposed to kill Der Juden and Les Americans?
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton yesterday dealt a crushing blow to the International Freedom Center planned for Ground Zero, saying she wants the project canned for failing to listen to the 9/11 families. "I cannot support the IFC," Clinton declared last night in a strongly worded statement in response to an inquiry from The Post.
Her tough comments are Clinton's first significant remarks about the controversy raging at Ground Zero over the Freedom Center, which 9/11 families and other critics fear will become a center of anti-Americanism. "While I want to ensure that development and rebuilding in lower Manhattan move forward expeditiously, I am troubled by the serious concerns family members and first responders have expressed to me," Clinton said.
"The LMDC [Lower Manhattan Development Corp.] has authority over the site and I do not believe we can move forward until it heeds and addresses their concerns." The family members of victims, as well as unions representing the city's cops and firefighters, want nothing less than the Freedom Center being booted from Ground Zero.
Given her influence, Clinton's hard line could spell doom for the Freedom Center's hopes of remaining at the World Trade Center site. Clinton spoke out the day after the IFC released a plan intended to save its spot at the site, but it was met with immediate opposition from 9/11 families. Clinton won't support any plan unless the families and first responders back it, said her spokesman, Philippe Reines.
Many relatives of 9/11 victims denounced the Freedom Center plan as an insult to the 2,749 people who diedat the Twin Towers because it would paint them as a little more than a footnote to the world's march toward freedom. The families, cops and firefighters say the IFC's plan to use hallowed land at Ground Zero to highlight poverty as a barrier to freedom diminishes the tragedy of 9/11.
Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) also voiced concern yesterday and called for a compromise â although he didn't state flat-out opposition to the Freedom Center. "There's got to be a way to meet the families' sincere and real needs and build a center that honors the freedom that the victims died for. We hope that the LMDC will find some common ground quickly," Schumer said.
Gov. Pataki â who wields strong influence over the LMDC, which will soon decide the Freedom Center's fate â is traveling abroad and has yet to take a stand on the Freedom Center's latest proposal. Pataki has said thathe won't support any plan that offers a forum for anti-Americanism.
Clinton's opposition means that the anti-IFC push is now a bipartisan cause. Three New York Republicans â Reps. John Sweeney (Saratoga), Peter King (L.I.) and Vito Fossella (S.I.) â are already challenging it as a "blame America first" project. Yesterday, the trio of Republicans formally requested a congressional oversight hearing as a step toward blocking the IFC from getting any of the $2.7 billion in federal funds allocated for Ground Zero. "The whole thing was hijacked. If you asked people on the street what they wanted at Ground Zero, this would be the last thing that they wanted," Sweeney said.
I have no illusions about the New Hillary, but the fact that she feels her political chances are better if she openly opposes the Far Left means there is some dim hope for the Democratic party.
#3
In a way these people are correct. Once we are all equally impoverished subjugated and thought controlled to the level of your average serf in North Korea, Cuba or the USSR we will be free in a way. And no one will fight unless I like the look of that piece of bark your eating. Then we got a problem.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
09/24/2005 19:40 Comments ||
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#4
That piece of land has gone thought alot in history. There's alot of risidual pain from 9/11, yet we all realize life is temporary. People have been dying everyday since the history of man, each loss causes pain to someone.
However, sometimes people hold onto pain and can't let go, but 9/11 souls should have their peace and we should see more than their deaths. 200 years from now, people will not be interested in how we died, but how we lived.
On this thought, I believe it should be rebuilt, into something that teaches and inspires, planting good seeds for the future generations.
Ok, on Hillary Cliton, she has unresolved issues of her own AND has I've always felt she has narrow vision. In this article, I see her just flexing her muscles for exposure. She doesn't offer any logic why we should not move forward, just demonstating public association with the families. That's her job, getting votes.
The Defense Department on Friday reversed its earlier decision to bar key witnesses from testifying about just how much information the U.S. government had on the Sept. 11 hijackers before they led the attacks that killed 3,000 people. The Senate Judiciary Committee has therefore scheduled a second hearing for next week on the formerly secret Pentagon intelligence unit called "Able Danger".
Former members of Able Danger say the group identified Sept. 11 hijackers, including Mohamed Atta, more than a year before the attacks. Although those Able Danger analysts say they told the Sept. 11 commission about their findings, former members of the panel have so far dismissed the claim.
The Senate Judiciary Committee said in a statement Friday that the Pentagon now will allow five witnesses to testify. Among those are Army Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, Navy Capt. Scott Phillpott and defense contractor John Smith. Shaffer said in written testimony last week that the Pentagon blocked him from offering information on Able Danger and its identification of Atta â the lead hijacker. Committee Chairman Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., had suggested that the Pentagon's refusal to allow the testimony "may be an obstruction" to the committee's work.
The second hearing will focus on what happened with pre-attack charts and information allegedly destroyed at the behest of military leaders. The committee held its first hearing Wednesday, after which senators still had questions. "I think the Department of Defense owes the American people an explanation about what went on here," Specter said. "The American people are entitled to some answers."
Shaffer's attorney, Mark Zaid, also said that the Pentagon prevented testimony from a defense contractor that he also represents.
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said the Defense Department had a representative at the hearing and that it had provided sufficient information to committee members. âI think there are aspects of this as a classified program that we have expressed some concerns with respect to the appropriateness of some things in an open hearing,â Whitman told reporters after the first hearing on Wednesday. âWe are working very closely to provide all the information that [committee members] need to assess Able Danger.â
Zaid fielded questions from committee members on behalf of Shaffer and contractor Smith. He testified that Able Danger, using data mining techniques, identified four of the terrorists who struck on Sept. 11, 2001. Zaid said Shaffer would have testified about charts his team created dealing with Al Qaeda and a grainy photo on file of Atta. âShaffer remembers it specifically because of the evil death look in Mohamad Attaâs eyes,â Zaid said.
Pentagon officials had acknowledged earlier this month that they had found three people who recall an intelligence chart identifying Atta as a terrorist prior to the Sept. 11 attacks.
Specter asked the official representing the Department of Defense at the hearing, William Dugan, the acting assistant to the secretary for intelligence oversight, if the department had any information about an Al Qaeda cell and Atta. "I don't know," Dugan replied.
Specter asked Dugan to "find out the answers to those questions" relating to what the department knew about the workings of Able Danger.
Able Danger personnel have said they tried to give the FBI information three times, but Defense Department attorneys refused, citing legal concerns about investigations run by the military on U.S. soil, Zaid said.
Former Army Major Eric Klein Smith also testified that he was instructed to destroy data and documents related to Able Danger in May and June of 2000, in accordance with Army regulations that limited the collection and holding of information of U.S. persons. Klein Smith said the order to destroy data was not hostile or aggressive, it was a matter of policy. Asked if this information could have prevented Sept. 11, the major said he could not speculate, but believed it would have been significant and useful.
Klein Smith said that he did not remember seeing a picture of Atta, but said he believed "implicitly" claims by Shaffer and Phillpott that they had seen Atta's picture.
Zaid told committee members that some of the secret unit's records were also destroyed in March 2001 and spring 2004.
Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa., was the first lawmaker to come forward with claims that the Sept. 11 commission that investigated pre-attack intelligence failed to accept offers from Able Danger staff about the data it had before the attacks. Weldon said their refusal to hear from Able Danger's members makes the government record of intelligence incomplete.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
09/24/2005 00:23 ||
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#1
Will lawyers and Jags please explain to us citizens why the chance of a foreign national living in the US having his privacy violated in a minor way is more important then the safety of thousands?
I await their keen eagle eye arguments and note that some of us think their arguments are so poor they should be the stars in a necktie party.
#2
I remain apprehensive about the public airing of intelligence matters, including Able Danger.
First off, Leahy has leaked classfied intelligence in the pass that could have gotten people killed.
Second, the data mining techniques are still being utilized today. Its the same techniques that lead to the apprehension of Saddam and the shoot down of his loony boyz.
Posted by: Captain America ||
09/24/2005 1:07 Comments ||
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Finally, the Senate Judical Committee is populated with Kennedy, Biden, Schumer, and DiFi. I can say no more.
Rumsfeld isn't opposed to hearing provided they are conducted by the appropriate committee, the Senate Intelligence Committee, and performed in closed hearings.
Posted by: Captain America ||
09/24/2005 1:09 Comments ||
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#4
Let's make this clear. The committee doesn't need to know anything on data/intel gathering methodologies or techniques. All the committee needs is the information on whether terrorists and terrorists activities were discovered, when they were discovered, and then the decision makers who withheld the information from the government offices to act upon the information. That does not compromise 'critical' intelligence material or operations. Regardless of what a JAG or civilian lawywer may or might have said, there is nothing in the books that prohibits the chain of command to kick the issue all the way up to the President. That is the process that the committee has to review. However, they will not get that till they issue warrants and compel testimony under oath.
#5
CA6709---Hit the nail on the head. This has to do with the consequences of the actions taken or not taken by some Pentagon lawyers. The technical details are not necessary to divulge.
The biggest concern is whether the same structure and "corporate culture" still exists in the agencies that could bring on more 9-11s.
PC will get us all killed if we don't get rid of it.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
09/24/2005 13:03 Comments ||
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The Pentagon and the Senate Judiciary Committee squabbled publicly on Friday about whether lawmakers could question five key witnesses in public about their claims the U.S. military identified four September 11 hijackers long before the 20001 attacks.
The Defense Department came under fire from Republican and Democratic lawmakers this week when it prohibited the same witnesses, including members of a secret military intelligence team code-named Able Danger, from appearing before the judiciary panel at a public hearing on Wednesday.
The panel's chairman, Republican Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, said at Wednesday's hearing the Pentagon could be guilty of obstructing congressional proceedings. Other lawmakers accused the Defense Department of orchestrating a cover-up.
On Friday, the Senate committee announced the Pentagon had reversed its position and would allow the five witnesses to testify at a new public hearing scheduled for October 5.
The Pentagon denied anything had changed, despite behind-the-scenes negotiations to reach a solution agreeable to both sides.
"Our position has not changed," Defense spokesman Bryan Whitman told Reuters. "This is a classified program and there are still aspects of it that are not appropriate for an open hearing. And that's what we have told the committee."
Not so, responded William Reynolds, the judiciary committee's director of communications.
"The Pentagon has agreed to make five witnesses available. Although there was no talk at the time when they made that offer, the assumption was that it would be in an open committee hearing," Reynolds said in an interview.
"If the Pentagon has issues with that, they need to let us know," he added.
Able Danger, now defunct, was a small highly classified data-mining operation that used powerful computers to sift through reams of public data in search of intelligence clues on a variety of topics.
The five witnesses in question were all involved with Able Danger and contend the team identified September 11 ringleader Mohamed Atta and three other hijackers as members of an al Qaeda cell in early 2000 -- more than a year before the attacks.
A Pentagon review of the operation has turned up no documents to support the assertion.
But one prospective witness, Army Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, has said publicly that Able Danger members tried to pass the information about Atta along to the FBI three times in September 2000 but were forced by Pentagon lawyers to cancel the meetings.
Much of the information related to Able Danger was destroyed in 2000, according to a former Army officer who testified before Specter's panel on Wednesday.
Lawmakers from both parties have suggested the Pentagon is trying to prevent the witnesses from testifying for fear that they could confirm that data which might have prevented the attacks on New York and Washington was known to the federal government long before September 11, 2001.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
09/24/2005 00:20 ||
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Issue the damn warrants to compel testimony. We don't need to know 'How', we need to learn 'What' was produced and 'Why' it didn't get in the right hands.
#2
Sounds to me like the same lawyers that stopped them from passing info are now covering their asses by blocking the testamony. Not that the FBI back then would act on it. The FBI would have probably gone after the Pentagon for the method of collection and then leaked the methods to the press.
Posted by: 49 pan ||
09/24/2005 15:16 Comments ||
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Rep. Cynthia McKinney was involved Friday in a new series of conspiracy theories concerning the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, but this time she let others do most of the talking.
The Georgia Democrat hosted a forum at the Congressional Black Caucus' legislative conference entitled, "The 9/11 Omission: What the Commission Got Wrong." Most of her panelists had written books on the attacks, some of which accuse the Bush administration of a coverup if not actually being coconspirators alongside al Qaeda.
McKinney, who four years ago made controversial remarks on a radio talk show that Bush had prior warning of the attacks and profited by them, was mostly silent this time. However, she nodded vigorously as many of the panelists spoke and concluded one panel by signaling her agreement with some of the charges.
"We had four significant failures on one day of a trillion-dollar military and intelligence infrastructure," McKinney said. "I don't think that is certainly a possible thing to have happened. It's quite a coincidence, if it is."
One of the speakers, David Ray Griffin, labeled as "a 571-page lie" a report produced by an independent commission that investigated the events leading up to the attacks. Griffin's most recent book, "The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions," suggest there must have been pre-planted explosives inside the World Trade Center to topple the steel towers after the airplanes hit.
Another author, Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, suggested a Pentagon initiative may have been complicit in the anthrax attacks on Washington several months after Sept. 11, 2001. She also suggested a former government worker the FBI has targeted for years may indeed have been involved.
Former Army scientist Steven Hatfill was once labeled as a "person of interest" in the investigation, but Rosenberg refused to say whether she meant him because of legal concerns.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
09/24/2005 00:17 ||
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#1
McKinney's a raving moonbat racist who makes Lester Maddox look civil and rational by comparison. It speaks volumes about her Congressional district that they elected someone with her past. Anybody who thinks whites are the worst racists in this country needs to take a good look at McKinney and her ilk (like Maxine Waters, etc.) If white people said the same things about blacks that elected blacks routinely say about whites, the whites would be arrested and jailed for hate speech. This double standard is getting real damned old.
Posted by: mac ||
09/24/2005 9:54 Comments ||
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#2
Former Army scientist Steven Hatfill was once labeled as a "person of interest" in the investigation, but Rosenberg refused to say whether she meant him because of legal concerns.
"...But if you want to assume that, you go right ahead, nudge nudge wink wink."
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
09/24/2005 10:38 Comments ||
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#3
McKinney's a raving moonbat racist who makes Lester Maddox look civil and rational by comparison.
And warmly welcomed into the Democrat party. Oh, sure, they booted her out once. But as soon as memories faded and they were sure the press wouldn't say a thing, she was back in.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
09/24/2005 10:49 Comments ||
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#4
Please forgive me if I come accross as a racists but after the polls about New Orleans can anyone be surprised what McKinney says? If 75% of the Black thinkn that race had something to do with the New Orleans debacle then it can't be a huge leap for some (McKinney included) to believe any 9/11 conspiracy. I feel sorry for any children they have because they will grow up hamstrung with these prejudices.
#5
CS - when your "leaders" from your supposed civil rights orgs and elected members of congress participate in lunatic -victim-racial-trashtalk, you got what you friggin deserve. I won't contribute to a LA charity - MS or Al or Tx now. I'm tired of listening to the whining and finger-pointing by corrupt and ungrateful victims
Posted by: Frank G ||
09/24/2005 12:22 Comments ||
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#6
Playing the race card is is ridiculous and I agree most of these theories are off the wall. However, watching the towers fall, I thought it looked like a controlled demolition and the third building that went down isn't really explained at all by jet fuel. I could believe that terrorists scoped out the building and pre-positioned explosives, but not our own administration. These lies are just like all the other ones, like blaming Israel for the Hamas explosions.
#7
gravity failure due to heat-caused strength failure is a gradual thing. First-yr Engineering students could tell you that....it's called elastic failure, then gravity does what's called a P-delta effect: the more it bends the heavier the stress on what were once vertical columns....eventually totally plastic failure - i.e. pancaking of floors via gravity and impact
Posted by: Frank G ||
09/24/2005 16:37 Comments ||
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#8
As long as we're engaging in 9/11 conspiracy theories...
I heard that McKinney and her father were responsible for 9/11. AND for Katrina destroying New Orleans - particularly the part where the poor blacks lived. And then, when they saw how quickly New Orleans was being pumped out, and that many black people weren't blaming Bush, and Bush promised government help in the rebuilding, they steered Hurricane Rita right to the Louisiana coast so more rain would fall and the levees would breech again. (They're smart - they didn't make it hit in the exact same location as Katrina. That might have raised suspicions.)
9/11 was because they wanted to do something drastic that killed a lot of Americans and damaged the economy so they'd have something big they could blame Bush and the Joooooos for. That seems to be waning, so they brought in the hurricanes hoping the destruction and aftermath would destroy the Bush Administration.
And it's worked out well for them, hasn't it? They're getting lots of attention, black votes, and donations, and the leftist press conspires to cover up their involvement. Even the 9/11 Commission didn't call them to testify. And Bush's poll numbers are down.
I think they're going to get away with it....
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
09/24/2005 18:52 Comments ||
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#9
Listen to Frank G., Danielle. He forgot to mention that he is a civil engineer with a very great deal of experience -- so this is well within his professional expertise. I am not an engineer myself (I took just enough courses to know my limitations), so in such matters I know that whatever impression I may have had must yield to his knowlege-based opinion.
#10
I'm tired of listening to the whining and finger-pointing by corrupt and ungrateful victims
I remember my Mommy reading me a story about this once. It involved three little pigs. I don't recall whether the pig who worked hard and built his house out of bricks charged his brothers rent after the wolf sopup was eaten or whether he just threw them out of his house. But I'm pretty sure he didn't build them new brick houses while they fiddled and danced.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
09/24/2005 21:35 Comments ||
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Congressional Democrats, signaling plans to become more assertive about Iraq, yesterday asked the director of national intelligence to brief senators on conditions there, including whether the conflict has strengthened Islamic terrorists rather than weakened them.
In a letter to director John D. Negroponte, top Democratic senators said they need more information on the anti-U.S. insurgency, allied support, training of Iraqi security forces and many other topics.
"Having the latest intelligence assessments from the National Intelligence Council (NIC) that take into account the coordinated and collective views of the Intelligence Community is critical to ensuring that U.S. policy is properly focused and resources correctly allocated to address the most pressing threats and challenges," the letter said. It was signed by Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) and the ranking Democrats on committees dealing with intelligence, foreign relations and the military. It asks Negroponte to brief "all interested senators" behind closed doors, starting Oct. 5 and then about every 60 days thereafter.
The letter's more than 20 questions include "To what extent are Islamic extremists exploiting the Iraq conflict to recruit new, anti-U.S. jihadists to join or support their cause?" and "Have Al Qaeda and the global violent extremist movement gained strength or weakened as a result of the war in Iraq?"
It also asks about the intelligence community's "assessment of the strength, size, lethality and composition of the insurgency," and whether "fighters and techniques seasoned on the battlefield in Iraq are being exported to Western Europe, the United States, Afghanistan, or other regions?"
The letter comes as congressional Democrats say they plan to speak out more forcefully on Iraq in coming weeks. But the party faces significant divisions, with some members calling for a timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops, and others agreeing with President Bush that a timetable would help the insurgency.
At the Pentagon yesterday, Bush acknowledged that Americans are increasingly uneasy about the war's progress. "Listen, there are differences of opinion about the way forward," he said. "I understand that. Some Americans want us to withdraw our troops so that we can escape the violence. I recognize their good intentions, but their position is wrong. Withdrawing our troops would make the world more dangerous and make America less safe."
Bob Stevenson, spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), said the Democrats' letter "really is unnecessary" because Frist has initiated classified briefings on Iraq from Negroponte, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and others. "There is no need to have a partisan letter that is released . . . to generate press," he said.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
09/24/2005 00:12 ||
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#1
Maybe the Dems just want to expand their fundraising lists. Worked for Galloway.
BAGHDAD â US soldiers shot an Iraqi prisoner after he attacked them during interrogation, the US army said yesterday. The man was arrested in Fallujah, western Iraq on Tuesday on suspicion of involvement in terrorist activities. According to the US military, soldiers shot him dead when he attacked them during interrogation.
Human Rights Watch to file complaint in 5 .. 4 .. 3 ..
Posted by: Steve White ||
09/24/2005 00:42 ||
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#1
US soldiers shoot Iraqi prisoner
Iraqi prisoner lunges into bullet path
Posted by: Red Dog ||
09/24/2005 0:55 Comments ||
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#2
Inshallah
Posted by: Frank G ||
09/24/2005 1:16 Comments ||
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#3
Hey Red Dog - 'you ever think of taking up journalism? CNN maybe? Or BBC? Or NYT or WaPo?
You'd have to drink alone, but .......
#8
Scooter's absolutely right, and if I'd been more awake last night when I posted this I would have made a reference to the RAB or something.
.com: Mikey ain't comin' back. Book it.
Posted by: Steve White ||
09/24/2005 10:20 Comments ||
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#9
I wonder when the midnight arms cache "retrievals" start? Will there be the same old J-frame and 4 rounds of bullet?
Will Shots Ring out In The Night?
We wait with bad baited breath.
Posted by: N guard ||
09/24/2005 12:16 Comments ||
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#10
I read the headline and thought we'd finally gotten serious at Gitmo.
Syria is refusing to stop insurgents and foreign fighters from entering Iraq because it is frightened of efforts to build a democratic nation in the heart of the Middle East and wants them to fail, Iraq's foreign minister says.
Hoshyar Zebari said in an interview Thursday with The Associated Press that Syria isn't alone in trying to thwart Iraq's efforts to establish a democracy but because of its proximity, its refusal to cooperate is having a more devastating impact in lost lives from terrorist attacks.
"It is important that the world should know, really, that Syria is not helping. It's not cooperating, despite the many, many pledges, promises - none of that has happened," he said.
With Baghdad expecting insurgents to step up efforts to disrupt the Oct. 15 referendum on a new constitution, Zebari in his speech to the U.N. General Assembly on Wednesday urged Iraq's neighbors, especially Syria, "to root out elements of terror" by tightening border controls.
Syria's U.N. Ambassador Fayssal Mekdad insisted Wednesday that his country has been cooperating with Iraq by deploying 10,000 troops on the border, spending millions of dollars to establish barriers to prevent extremists from crossing, and arresting hundreds of potential infiltrators and sending them home.
He complained that requests to the United States for sophisticated equipment, including night vision binoculars, have been rejected, and he accused Iraq of not doing enough to stop those who make it into the country.
But Zebari said Thursday that the problem rests squarely with Syria.
"The question is not a technical issue ... of border control equipment, technology. It's a question of political will," he said. "We think if you want you can help, and so that's what we are saying. We're not calling for another invasion against Syria by American or international forces."
Asked why he thought Syria lacked the political will, Zebari replied, "I think it's based on wrong assumptions - to make life difficult in Iraq, to see this plan of democracy-building fail in Iraq."
"They and others are frightened, really, of this experiment to succeed. This is the bottom line. They don't want these values, these ideas to take root in a country like Iraq. This may affect them," he said.
"I think this project of democracy-building in Iraq has alarmed many authoritarian autocratic regimes in the region," Zebari said. "Many of them are counting on our failure, and they have not been helpful."
He said his government's response to the Syrians and other opponents is to argue that supporting Baghdad is in their interest, "that a democratic Iraq will not contradict your national interest, your country. We'll do business with you."
He said many Iraqis are defending the country's new democratic goals, which are embedded in the new constitution, including pluralism, democratic freedoms, a bill of rights, separation of powers, transparency and federalism.
"These are new ideas," Zebari said. "That's why they are not comfortable."
In contrast to Syria, he said, neighboring Iran has a very different agenda and is "behaving in a more shrewd way."
The Iranians support their allies and friends in Iraq, "but they are not encouraging or supporting groups to resort to violence, or to take up arms against the multinational force or against the government."
Iran is willing to study information about arms shipments and infiltration and is prepared to follow up on it, he said.
"They don't deny there is infiltration," Zebari said, "but they are always willing to establish mechanisms, communications, etc., to deal with these problems."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
09/24/2005 00:36 ||
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"YOU have been pushed upon us,â the British media operations officer announced as he greeted a party of six journalists arriving in Basra to report on Mondayâs confrontation between British troops and the Basra police. It was an inauspicious start to our efforts to inform the British public how their troops are faring in an increasingly turbulent region of southern Iraq.
The 36 hours that followed provided an insight into the control that the Ministry of Defence exerts upon the flow of information reaching Britain from Iraq. It ended with our being put back on a flight to Baghdad, The Timesâs request to âembedâ for a few days with the Coldstream Guards in Basra having been rejected. British officers in the field refer disparagingly to the current information policy, emanating from a Government nervous of criticism over its policy in Iraq, as âthe screwdriverâ. It does few favours to the soldiers serving in Iraq or to the society that pays for them to be there.
In Basra this week the official line, dictated to media operations officers in Iraq by printed handouts that tell them which questions they can answer and what the answers are, was that Mondayâs events were of limited significance. Echoing almost verbatim the account released by the MoD in London, officials at the headquarters of the Multinational Division in Basra told us that the violence against British troops involved a crowd of between 150 and 200 rioting Iraqis; that the police station at the centre of the violence was finally entered by British troops to ascertain whether the two British prisoners were still there; that the three British casualties were in a ânon-life-threateningâ condition; and that only 2 per cent of the violence in Iraq occurs in Basra.
During later briefings by those directly involved in the events, and after the few hours we actually managed to spend with the confident, informative and friendly Coldstream Guards, a different picture emerged. The rioting mob was 1,000-strong. Baton rounds and live fire were used to prevent the crowd from killing escaping Warrior crew members. An unknown number of Iraqis were killed. One British casualty was seriously burnt and has been evacuated to hospital in Britain. The police station was breached by an armoured vehicle to rescue a six-man negotiating team trapped inside. The Iraqi police involved are a powerful mafia gang with terrorist links, unaccountable to the city police chief, who enjoy the support of figures at government level.
It seemed reasonable to ask to be allowed to remain with the Coldstream Guards in order to better understand the situation and see them redeploy within the city. But Squadron Leader Darren Moss, the Press Information Centre director at the divisional headquarters, explained that the presence already of a small group of trade and defence journalists in the divisional area would probably negate any ability to cope with our additional presence. Later he told us that the MoD had refused our request and that we should leave. Once we were back in Baghdad the MoD denied ordering our ejection and put the blame for it on the media operations officers in Basra. It is still unclear whose decision it was. Whoever it was, the outcome was that the only independent British journalists were removed from Basra. âSoldiers on the ground always used to be confident enough to know what they could say to journalists,â a captain remarked shortly before we left. âWith the control on information, now for the first time we see them turn round and ask their officers, âWhat am I supposed to say sir?â. â
MIXED MESSAGES
âThis was a small unrepresentative crowd (200-300) in a city of 1.5 millionâ
Statement by Brigadier John Lorimer, Commander 12 Mechanised Brigade
âThe crowd was at least 1,000, probably moreâ
Captain James Bradford, No 2 Company Coldstream Guards.
âWeâve heard nothing to suggest we stormed the prison. We understand there were negotiationsâ
MoD spokesman three hours after Warriors attacked the compound
âI am glad to say that the three young men in those pictures have injuries which are not seriousâ
John Reid
âA number [were] hit by petrol bombs of whom one is sadly in a serious condition,and has been taken back to the UKâ
Lt-Col Nick Henderson, Coldstream Guards
âThere has not been a fundamental breakdown in trust between the British Government and the Iraqi Governmentâ
John Reid, Wednesday
âThe governing council decided to stop all co-operation with the Britishâ
Basra governor Mohammed al-Waili yesterday
Posted by: G. ||
09/24/2005 00:00 ||
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Former Iraqi Prime Minister, Ayad Allawi demanded that all Baathist who committed crimes against the Iraqi people during the rule of Saddam Hussein should be punished. He stressed that it is important that they be tried before Iraqi courts. Allawi told Asharq Al-Awsat in Amman that "there are Baathist who committed murder, persecution and torture against Iraqi citizens. They should be brought to justice before Iraqi courts to get their just punishment." The former head of the Iraqi Government suggested that a committee should be formed to follow up the Baathist who harmed Iraqi people so that the Iraqi people would feel justice has been done.
Allawi questioned the outcomes of the present Supreme Debathification Commission saying, "one of the first duties of this commission should be to follow up the Baathist who committed crimes against the Iraqi people because they were trying to support and keep an unjust regime in power." He indicated that the Commission should seek facts and to build on facts and should listen to the eyewitnesses. Their work should not turn into haphazard acts of vendetta. They should allow the Iraqi justice to assume its active role in building its just institution. Allawi called for the formation of a legal committee that would seek facts, listen to eyewitnesses and bring the Baathist who committed crimes to justice.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/24/2005 00:00 ||
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Human Rights group alleges Iraq prisoner abuse Abu Gharib redux, via Drudge...
WASHINGTON (AFP) - Troops from the army's elite 82nd Airborne Division routinely beat and mistreated Iraqi prisoners at a base near Fallujah in central Iraq with the approval of their superior officers, a New York-based human rights group said. Beat on the brat with a baseball bat...
Human Rights Watch said three soldiers -- two sergeants and a captain who were not identified by name -- provided the accounts of abuse, which they said occurred at Forward Operating Base Mercury near Fallujah from September 2003 through April 2004. They're lucky to be alive...
They alleged that a sergeant broke one prisoner's leg with a metal baseball bat. Others were made to hold five-gallon (19-liter) jugs of water with their arms outstretched, according to the report. Ima kinda partial to wooden bats myself...
Detainees, known as PUCs or "persons under control," were subjected to stress positions, extremes of hot and cold, sleep deprivation, denied food and water and were piled in human pyramids, the report said. Sounds like rehased stories to me...
The abuse was meted out as part of military intelligence interrogations or merely to "relieve stress" of troops, the report said. Drinking or beating off usually relieves my stress, but that's just me.
"Everyone in camp knew if you wanted to work out your frustration you show up at the PUC tent. In a way it was sport," a sergeant is quoted as saying. Yeah, some sport, beating on detainees. The bad fish smell starts already...
"One day (a sergeant) shows up and tells a PUC to grab a pole. He told him to bend over and broke the guys leg with a mini Louisville Slugger, a metal bat," he said. After Lynndie England, I'm not buying it.
The soldiers were from the 82nd Airborne Division's 1st battalion 504th parachute regiment. Non reservists? Still not buying it.
"The accounts here suggest that the mistreatment of prisoners by the US military is even more widespread than has been acknowledged to date, including among troops belonging to some of the best trained, most decorated and highly respected units in the US Army," the report said. Which is precisely why I'm not buying it.
The report says that in many cases the abuses were specifically ordered by military intelligence before interrogations, and that it was widely known by superior officers both inside and outside of military intelligence. Some might call these efforts 'extracting intelligence' from enemy combatants but our military is never given the benefit of the doubt.
According to the report, the captain made persistent efforts to raise his concern about the abuse with his chain of command but was ignored and told to consider his career.
He said when he made an appointment to meet with Senate staffers, his commanding officer denied him permission to leave his base.
The captain was interviewed several days later by representatives of the army's Criminal Investigations Command and the army inspector general.
The soldiers attributed the abuse to lack of guidance on the Geneva Conventions rules on the treatment of prisoners and assumptions that they did not apply. Damn straight they don't apply to terrorists.
"Trends were accepted. Leadership failed to provide clear guidance so we just developed it. They wanted intel (intelligence). As long as no PUCs came up dead it happened," one sergeant was quoted as saying. I find it extremely hard to believe 'clear guidance' was not provided after Abu Gharib.
"We heard rumors of PUCs dying so we were careful. We kept it to broken arms and legs and shit," he said. What, no naked pyrimaids? Pikers...
Captain Fishback, who has served combat tours in Afghanistan and Iraq, gave Human Rights Watch and Senate aides his long account only after his efforts to report the abuses to his superiors were rebuffed or ignored over 17 months, according to Senate aides and John Sifton,
In a previous part of the article said the army open 400 investigations. My problem is this: You report what you believe to be abuse and there it stays. This going to HRW is an indicator of agenda rather than the search for justice.
And in another part of the article, the report says, waaay down near the end of the story the two NCOs prominently mentioned as anonymous sources, failed to report the abuse and came forward to HRW to report this abuse. This smells of agenda rather than truth. I got five bucks that says reports to command were made by someone else and investigated. Any takers?
This is yet another story where the scadal is enemy illegal combatants are abuse but no Americans are dead. It seems that the NyTimes is sorrowful they could not report dead Americans, and seeking to make up for this shortcoming by trying to dishonor the military trying to fight the war.
#5
Several of us have said this before, but it bears repeating.
This is an easy problem to solve. Take no prisoners. Then there can be no allegations of abuse by these America-hating, freedom-hating (except for their own), agenda-driven, lying clowns.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
09/24/2005 11:05 Comments ||
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#6
Badanov has a really god point. The military has not been shy about investigating abuses so I am not convinced that a Capt was rebuffed up his entire chain f command. When I was active duty there were signs all over the place giving you the direct phone number of the IG. I also NEVER believe second party accounts of anything.
At the end of this month, Israel will be dedicating its largest desalination plant on the Mediterranean Sea. The facility is located in Ashkelon, not far from the northern border of the Gaza Strip. In the first phase of operation, it is meant to supply 100 million cubic meters of water a year.
But now, as the government is gearing up for a party, a classified report has landed on its desk that was commissioned from the Israel Water Commission prior to Israel's decision to leave the Gaza Strip and portions of northern Samaria. The section relevant to the desalination plant in Ashkelon states that if the Palestinians go ahead with their plans to lay a sewage pipe that drains into the sea in the northern Gaza Strip, it will "paralyze the largest desalination plant in Ashkelon and pollute the nearby beaches."
The wording used by the Israel Water Commission in this report is uncharacteristically harsh: "Crippling the work of the desalination plant by piping sewage into the sea from northern Gaza is intolerable for the water economy. Any attempt to lay a pipe that drains sewage into the sea and pollutes our coastline must be physically stopped." This kind of stern language was not even employed when Syria and the Arab countries tried to divert the headwaters of the Jordan years ago, which eventually led to the outbreak of the Six-Day War.
The water and sewage problems that Israel and the Palestinians face today are proof that unilateral disengagement is impossible. The conclusion is that understandings and agreements are unavoidable. Those who try to do without them end up resorting to military force. Unlike the past, now there are several major powers prepared to intervene in the event of a serious crisis. Some of them (the United States, Germany, Japan, Sweden, the European Union) have been asked to help the Palestinians solve the sewage problems in the Gaza Strip. They can impose strict conditions that will keep matters from deteriorating.
To the credit of Palestinian water commissioner Fadel Kawash, he appears to be aware of Israel's concerns. "In principle, I accept that there cannot be unsupervised discharge of sewage, to the sea or anywhere else. Both sides will suffer if the situation gets out of hand," says Kawash. "The fighting has been bad for us. The foreign contractors have left, and the only ones still around are the Swedes. Today we have one sewage pipeline from the Gaza Strip to the sea, in the vicinity of Gaza City (Sheikh Ajlin). Waste flows in the direction of Israel in the Wadi Hanun area. I agree that spilling sewage into the sea should not be allowed. But bear in mind that there is a huge pool of sewage near Beit Lakiya, covering some 400 dunams of land." Kawash says the cleanup in the northern Gaza Strip could take at least two years.
Ultimately, the Palestinian water commissioner is bouncing the ball back into Israel's court. On the one hand, he admits that there are close to 300 illegal drilling projects going on in the Jenin district ("we have no police to enforce the law"), with most of the drilling equipment bought from a factory in Beit Shean. He says there is an Israeli-Palestinian mafia operating here.
On the other hand, he argues that the major problem is the sewage -- 15 million cubic meters of it - produced by the Israeli settlements. The rest of the waste, some of it seeping into the groundwater and flowing toward Israel, is from Palestinian villages.
This is a dangerous business -- in many respects even more dangerous than terror. Terror attacks and Qassam rockets can be fought with fences and firepower. But Israel cannot block Palestinian sewage with secure borders. Deterioration on this front is a recipe for all-out war.
#1
Hmm, not good - this could get nasty very quickly. At least they're both talking, although the language used is more confrontational than concilliatory.
BTW, 1 dunam = 1000 m^2 (0.247 acres)
Posted by: Tony (UK) ||
09/24/2005 12:59 Comments ||
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#2
Cut the water off to Gaza and the Paleo sewage outfall goes away, unless the Paleos pump their saline wells for sewage flushing. The Ashkelon RO plant will need some pretreatment to get rid of the suspended solids and coliform bacteria. The Israelis better set up countermeasures, because Hamas and Co will use raw sewage as a weapon when the rest of their arsenal fails.
The Paleos will use this as just one of a thousand cuts to hurt Israel. They will turn Gaza into another sh*thole like Iraqi towns our troops find. I should say, already have.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
09/24/2005 13:15 Comments ||
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#3
Ah yes, the PA brings back 700 AD Brand Typhoid to the ME, an oldie goldie.
#4
somebody (read US/EU) will buy the Paleos a treatment plant. Of course, the Israelis could forever destroy any discharge plant under construction, forever. Let the Paleos be awash in their own filth for a while
Posted by: Frank G ||
09/24/2005 14:44 Comments ||
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#5
and forever...yeah....that's the (redundant) ticket...sorry...was interrupted mid typing :-)
Posted by: Frank G ||
09/24/2005 16:04 Comments ||
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#6
The Israeli-Palestinian mafia? My head is spinning. Mahmoud Finkelberg sleeps wit da fishes tonight, I mean sleeps wit da toids.
UN investigators have completed the questioning of several Syrian officials over the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq al-Hariri, Syrian and UN officials say. "The team has returned from Damascus. They are set to meet tomorrow to assess their work in Syria and consider the next step," Nejib Friji, UN spokesman in Beirut, said.
In Damascus, a Syrian foreign ministry official said the UN team had ended its visit and called Syria's cooperation with the investigators a sign of Syria's willingness to help them "to unveil the perpetrators of this horrendous crime". Neither Friji nor the Syrian official commented on the questions raised during the meetings. Head of the UN team Detlev Mehlis also handed control of the crime scene back to Lebanese officials, Friji said, after foreign experts concluded their investigations. The spokesman said it was now up to the Lebanese authorities when to reopen the road where a large truck bomb killed al-Hariri and 20 other people on 14 February. Neither side has named the officials interviewed but Lebanese political sources have said the at least eight officials questioned include senior intelligence officers working in Lebanon at the time and their commanders in Syria.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/24/2005 00:00 ||
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This, said the commander, was a Chinese-made, remote-controlled spy plane which had been used by militants to spy on army positions.
It is bright yellow I said. Their reply, that does not matter if it is used at night.
Several journalists asked how such a flimsy looking thing could carry a camera?
Not just a camera was the response from one general.
Upon my return to Islamabad I went to a toy shop.
There was the exact same plane, the same model - even the same, bright yellow colour. The price about $55. Who would have thought a spy plane could be so cheap.
Posted by: john ||
09/24/2005 13:15 ||
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#1
The Pak army !!
Posted by: john ||
09/24/2005 18:57 Comments ||
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Yep, she's a 'centrist' like I'm a pro bike racer.
2008 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton praised anti-American activist Harry Belafonte on Thursday after Belafonte charged that U.S. foreign policy had "wrecked the planet." It's that damn Halliburton earthquake machine...
"There's a lot of people out here who are really pissed off," Belafonte told the Congressional Black Caucus, with Mrs. Clinton and Rep. Charlie Rangel standing nearby. I'm pissed, too - having to read this dreck every other day.
"Our foreign policy has made a wreck of this planet," Belafonte complained. "I'm always in Africa . . . And when I go to these places I see American policy written on the walls of oppression everywhere." Do us a favor, Harry - the next time you're in Africa, stay there.
The former calypso singer's anti-U.S. rant won immediate praise from Hillary, who stepped up to the microphone and told the crowd: "What Harry said is so important." Interesting choice of word, 'important', not 'right' or 'wrong'...
In quotes aired nationally by radio host Rush Limbaugh, Clinton explained that in last year's presidential election, "we heard a lot . . . about moral values. And you know as well as I do that there's a big move on to get people to forget that it's not only private morality, but public morality that needs to be looked at and considered." Right up there with "We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good", freakin' socialist.
Hillary then charged that the Bush administration had made "a concerted effort to make it even harder for poor people and non-English-speaking people and elderly people to vote in this country." Yeah, those minor inconveniences like identification.
Clinton was followed to the podium by Rep. Rangel, who wasted no time in disparaging President Bush as a racist. Since he's one himself...
"George Bush is our 'Bull' Connor," Rangel railed. "And if that doesn't get to you, nothing will be able to get to you, and it's time for us to be able to say that we're sick and tired and we're fired up and we're not going to take it anymore!" YEEEAAAARRRRGGGHHHHH!!!
Mrs. Clinton offered no objection to the president of the United States being compared to one of America's most notorious racists. Not in front of this crowd...
#2
George Bush is our Bull Conor
Charlie Rangel is our Reverend Baby Jackson
John Kerry is our JFK
Momma Sheeham is our Jane Fonda
Man, I wish I was alive.
Posted by: Lester M ||
09/24/2005 11:24 Comments ||
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#3
Democrats haven't tumbled to the fact that the era of throw-away lines is over. You can't say something overwhelmingly stupid to pander to an audience without it being recorded and broadcast to the rest of us. Hillary has sold herself too many times to too many different groups to have a real shot at leading the nation. Despite an enabling MSM, her own words will bring her down.
#8
Hillary then charged that the Bush administration had made "a concerted effort to make it even harder for poor people and non-English-speaking people and elderly people to vote in this country."
She forgot the core Democrat constituencies of the dead and fictional people.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
09/24/2005 17:27 Comments ||
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#9
Harry needs to tell us specific American policy has hurt Africa more than internal corruption.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
09/24/2005 19:46 Comments ||
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The National Security Agency has obtained a patent on a way of finding an Internet user's geographic location.
Patent 6,947,978, granted Tuesday, describes a way to discover someone's physical location by comparing it to a "map" of Internet addresses with known locations, CNET News.com reported Wednesday.
The NSA did not respond Wednesday to an interview request from CNET News.com, and the patent description talks only generally about the technology's potential uses.
It says the geographic location of Internet users could be used to "measure the effectiveness of advertising across geographic regions" or flag a password that "could be noted or disabled if not used from or near the appropriate location, CNET News.com said."
The NSA's patent relies on measuring the latency, or time lag, between computers exchanging data, of "numerous" locations on the Internet and building a "network latency topology map." Then the Internet address to be identified could be looked up on the map by measuring how long it takes known computers to connect to the unknown one, CNET News.com said.
DoubleClick has licensed geo-location technology to deliver location-dependent advertising, and Visa has signed a deal to use the concept to identify possible credit card fraud in online orders.
#1
Hey, Boris! They'll track you down no matter what you do to hide now. Posting from the library won't help you now. The NSA is good. Real good.
And remember, what they haven't declassified yet prolly works even better.
Posted by: N guard ||
09/24/2005 12:12 Comments ||
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#2
Easily defeated if you know the right way to go about it. If needed, I have a proxy that drops all packets from them and other ad companies anyway, and adds a random 100-400ms delay in the packets at the front plane of the router. Thats in addition to any filtering I choose to do at the client end on my own land, relays, etc.
For here I dont bother. But if it became important, no problem putting that stuff in.
#4
Why exactly would the NSA tip their hand on having this capability by seeking a patent? Are they a business or a spy agency? Perhaps they figure the bad guys already know and take counter-measures so they might as well see a resident engineer taken care of financially? If so, they overestimate the skills of many a jihadi. Or perhaps are they just looking to make the jihadi's more paranoid and slow their ops?
SHILLONG: Insurgent groups in the North-East are now threatening to use a new weapon against the security forces.
The Assam Rifles has received threats from militant organisations of this region that they would let loose HIV infected women to spread the disease among jawans posted in Meghalaya, Manipur, Nagaland and Tripura.
Posted by: john ||
09/24/2005 07:44 ||
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#1
HIV is a rather slow acting bio-weapon. Maybe the insurgents should sneak into the kitchens of the security forces and rub raw chicken on their cutting boards and counter tops.
#5
Funny? Kinda...until you think that this has been going on (using AIDS as a slow moving biological weapon) in the Sudan for a while- "soldiers" raping women and infecting them...eek. Sometimes I wish they would just stick to blowing people up. Gender and warfare with a twist.
#6
The soldiers are deliberately infecting them, beagletwo? But doesn't that mean the soldiers have to be infected first? Or do they think they'll just pass it on to the girls with their semen, and never personally have to live with the infection?
#7
Methinks the motivation for the rapes is obvious enough. HIV and whatever else they carry probably does not have anything to do with why it occurs save for the fact they carry guns and run the show where they are.
#8
Methinks the motivation for the rapes is obvious enough. HIV and whatever else they carry probably does not have anything to do with why it occurs save for the fact they carry guns and run the show where they are.
NEW DELHI â Aircraft carriers from the Indian and US navies will hold joint exercises for the first time this month, officials said yesterday, boosting ties between the world's two largest democracies. The Indian navyâs lone carrier, INS Viraat, and the USS Nimitz are to conduct joint operations on fleet air defences, anti-submarine warfare and anti-piracy operations off Indiaâs western coast.
India plans to build an aircraft carrier by 2012 as New Delhi moves to boost the blue-water capability of its naval forces. It has also signed a $1.5-billion deal with Russia for a second-hand carrier that will be handed over to India by 2009 after a refit. The Indian naval fleet, the seventh largest in the world, consists of around 140 vessels but many of its ships and submarines are old and in need of replacement.
Analysts said the joint naval exercises between India and the United States would boost ties between the two countries. "It provides a certain degree of substance to the larger aspect of India-US relations," said Uday Bhaskar of the New Delhi-based Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses. "We are moving to higher levels of complexities in (military) operational interface."
Posted by: Steve White ||
09/24/2005 00:45 ||
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U.S. soldiers train at the Counterinsurgency and Jungle Warfare School (CIJWS) during a joint India-U.S. jungle warfare exercise at Vairengte, about 140 kilometers (88 miles) north of Aizawl, in the northeastern Indian state of Mizoram, Saturday, Sept. 24, 2005. The two-week joint exercise on countering guerilla warfare began on Sept. 13 comprising U.S. soldiers of the 25th Infantry Division and Guam National Guards based at Fort Shafter, Hawaii. The U.S. soldiers are at the CIJWS for a third consecutive year following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in the United States.
Posted by: john ||
09/24/2005 15:26 Comments ||
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An alleged Libyan member of a password-protected al-Qaeda affiliated forum today, September 23, 2005, issued an âurgent call upon the Salafist Group for Call and Combatâ to publish an âannouncement regarding moon sightings.â According to the member, Col. Muammar Qaddafi, âthe dog, who is destroying the religion (Islam) and mocking it,â is purported to have forced fasting upon the Libyan Muslims according to calculations based upon the lunar calendar, rather than actual sightings of the moon, which is the time appropriate for fasting. He also indicates that the GSPC is called upon because it is the âMuslim group closest to us.â Further, the member prays for vengeance upon Qaddafi and his followers, stating: âO Allah, may you fight the sinning people who follow the devil - every one of them informing on his Muslim brother for the sake of this world.â
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
09/24/2005 00:21 ||
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I was wondeering why all of a sudden they were so cooperative...
The government has assured the Ittehad-e-Tanzeemat-e-Madars-e-Deenya (ITMD) that it would amend the Societies Registration Act of 1860 according to the allianceâs proposals to remove its concerns about the ordinance. Maulana Mufti Abdur Rashid, the ITMD general secretary, told a news conference on Friday that the provincial and the national assemblies would include ITMD concerns in a bill while tabling amendments in the law. He said the seminaries would not cooperate with the government in the registration process until the assemblies addressed their concerns before approving the ordinance.
Maulana Rashid said that the registrar would have no power to comment and reject the registration of a seminary, and that seminaries without hostels did not need registration. The ITMD held three meetings with the government on Thursday and Friday, including one with the prime minister. Maulana Rashid said that it had been agreed upon (by the government and the ITMD) that seminaries would not be bound to mention the details of their donors to the registrar. Every seminary will report its educational performance and submit a copy of their annual audit report to the registrar and there will be no need for separate registrations for different campuses of the same seminary.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/24/2005 00:00 ||
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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.
Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal said he has been warning top US government officials that Iraq is rapidly heading toward disintegration and there is the risk of a regional war. Speaking to reporters at the Saudi Embassy in Washington, Prince Saud said he was so worried he is warning âeveryone who will listenâ in the Bush administration. âThere is no dynamic now pulling the nation together,â the prince said. Iraqâs potential division into a Kurdish state in the north, a Sunni state in the center and a Shiite state in the south would âbring other countries in the region into the conflict,â he explained.
Score one for Al-Jazeera. The Doha-based news channel has hired Josh Rushing, a former US Marine captain who was the military's lead spokesman to Arabs during the Iraq invasion, to join its roster of on-air talent. Rushing was a central figure in last year's documentary Control Room, about how Al-Jazeera and the US networks covered the invasion. After the film was released, the Pentagon ordered Rushing not to speak about it, prompting him to resign after 14 years in the forces.
The young widow of a 7 July suicide bomber told Friday how she "totally abhorred" her husband's deadly actions. Samantha Lewthwaite described in an interview with the popular newspaper The Sun how Jermaine Lindsay tenderly kissed their young son goodbye before leaving on his lethal mission. She said she believed his mind had been poisoned by visits to radical mosques in London, Luton, southern England, and northern England. Lindsay, 19, blew himself up on a Piccadilly Line train between King's Cross and Russell Square stations in the worst of the suicide attacks on London on July 7, killing himself and 26 others.
Former Iraqi Prime Minister, Ayad Allawi demanded that all Baathist who committed crimes against the Iraqi people during the rule of Saddam Hussein should be punished. He stressed that it is important that they be tried before Iraqi courts. Allawi told Asharq Al-Awsat in Amman that "there are Baathist who committed murder, persecution and torture against Iraqi citizens. They should be brought to justice before Iraqi courts to get their just punishment." The former head of the Iraqi Government suggested that a committee should be formed to follow up the Baathist who harmed Iraqi people so that the Iraqi people would feel justice has been done. 
UN investigators have completed the questioning of several Syrian officials over the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq al-Hariri, Syrian and UN officials say. "The team has returned from Damascus. They are set to meet tomorrow to assess their work in Syria and consider the next step," Nejib Friji, UN spokesman in Beirut, said.
The government has assured the Ittehad-e-Tanzeemat-e-Madars-e-Deenya (ITMD) that it would amend the Societies Registration Act of 1860 according to the allianceâs proposals to remove its concerns about the ordinance. Maulana Mufti Abdur Rashid, the ITMD general secretary, told a news conference on Friday that the provincial and the national assemblies would include ITMD concerns in a bill while tabling amendments in the law. He said the seminaries would not cooperate with the government in the registration process until the assemblies addressed their concerns before approving the ordinance.
