Yemen Times Staff: Untouched by Rantburg Staff
Sanaaâa 26 oct - An exploded rocket was found in the border province of Najran on Friday . Local Saudi resources said that the rocket that had been fired from the Saudi region âYamâ . Whereas Daily al-Watan quoted a security source as saying an explosion, which occurred in the border province of Najran, was caused by a rocket fired from a distance of 25 kilometers (15 miles) inside Yemeni territory. There are conflicting news about the target of the rocket. Some sources said that the rocket aimed security region, whereas other sources said that the rocket targeted arable land called Hriz in Rjla area in Najran
"Fired rocket at land. Hit same. That is all."
An investigation was being undertaken by the Saudi and Yemeni authorities to identify the sources of the rocket.
Unmilitary resources exposed to Yemen News website that the military intelligence has found rest of rocket whose features are similar to that rocket had been found in Saudi regions and the investigation is continues to find out the sources of both.
on the other hand, Three Yemenis were killed in an attack launched by a Saudi war plane Tuesday in Midi, Harad district. Press sources affirmed three Yemenis were killed as they were crossing the borders to the Saudi lands. But the Commander of Yemeni Border Guards in Harad denied the veracity of this news. "The situation is quiet on the Yemeni-Saudi borders. No killings and no clashes. Press sources should be accurate when reporting news," Colonel Nasser informed Sahwa net.
"Remain calm. All is well."
Posted by: Steve ||
10/27/2005 09:43 ||
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More info needed. Who's rocket? Is it a "country made" rocket or imported? Is this testing for use by Jihadi in other regions. Are these rockets heading to Isreal/Palestine?
After watching Mythbusters last night this kind of news is sobering. They built several rockets both solid fuel and hybrid. No special tools were required.
Members of Kuwait's Northern Borders Department on Wednesday seized a truck attempting to smuggle 288 kilograms of cannabis into Kuwait from Iraq. In a press release, the Interior Ministry said border security received information that a truck arriving from Iraq will attempt to smuggle a large quantity of drugs into Kuwait. The information led to forming a specialized team that managed to capture the truck with its Egyptian driver.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/27/2005 00:00 ||
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I can't imagine the stuff was grown in Iraq, given all the troops wandering around the landscape, so from where was it trans-shipped, I wonder?
#2
tw, really! I'll bet there's over 150,000 cops in California and look how much dope is grown there. And drug busts aren't their highest priority, I hope.
Awami League leaders on Tuesday warned that Bangladesh might face the fate of Afghanistan as âfundamentalist militants are now in an aggressive mood with direct patronisation of the BNP-led alliance governmentâ. At a party-organised seminar they also expressed their readiness to welcome external forces in âeliminating fundamentalist militants in Bangladeshâ. âRise of fundamentalist militants in the past four years of the BNP-Jamaat rule has put the independence of the country under threat and the county may face the fate like Afghanistan if we fail to resist militancy,â AL presidium member Dr Mohiuddin Khan Alamgir told the seminar.
It's occurred to me that power rushes in to fill a vacuum. 19th Century colonialism died off in the late 20th Century, and now a new form of colonialism is trying to take its place, driven not by somebody's East India Company, but by holy men.
The main opposition party organised the seminar on ârise of militancyâ as part of its series of anti-government programmes marking the four-year of the four-party alliance government. A former principal of the Foreign Service Academy, Mohiuddin Ahmed, said the Awami League was ready to accept any sort of interference of external forces in eliminating the fundamentalist militants in Bangladesh. âIf needed, we are ready to accept any sort of interference of external forces to resist fundamentalists,â Mohiuddin, also the special guest at the seminar, said. Echoing Mohiuddin Ahmed, AL central leader Professor Abu Sayeed said if the government could welcome external agencies to probe incidents like grenade attacks on an AL rally and on the British high commissioner in Dhaka, why the AL should not welcome external forces in resisting militants.
Asked whether the Awami League supports the US invasion on Iraq and Afghanistan in the name of eliminating militants, Mohiuddin Ahmed said they supported invasion on Afghanistan as the US had taken mandate from the United Nations for it.
AL joint secretary Obaidul Kader, executive president of Jatiya Samajtantrik Dal, Moinuddin Khan Badal, and AL leader Akhtaruzzaman also addressed the seminar held at the Dhaka reporters Unity. They said fundamentalist militants were now in aggressive mood in the country with direct patronisation of the BNP-Jamaat alliance government. Terming Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh and its student front, Islami Chhatra Shibir, militant, they demanded immediate ban of all militant groups active in the country. Abu Sayeed, who was the state minister for information of the past Awami League government, said Jamaat and Shibir were providing arms training to the militants through 7,000 madrassahs in the country.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/27/2005 00:00 ||
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JOHN Howard has offered the premiers a deal over shoot-to-kill powers as fresh demands emerged last night for greater judicial review of the new anti-terror laws.
After widespread condemnation of a plan to release the legislation on Melbourne Cup Day, Mr Howard also conceded he was flexible about the timetable, as long as the counter-terrorism laws were in place before Christmas.
"The idea that Parliament, having decided to sit on Melbourne Cup day, you somehow or other calibrate the legislation to introduce on that day is ridiculous," he said.
Queensland Premier Peter Beattie confirmed last night that Mr Howard had written to all state and territory leaders yesterday offering a compromise on the shoot-to-kill powers.
"He's prepared to move in relation to the shoot-to-kill provisions ... and in preventative detention orders apply the law that applies in each of the states," Mr Beattie said.
"Whatever applies in state law will apply."
The compromise will allow Federal and State police to use lethal force when taking people into preventative detention, but the changes will be enshrined in the Crimes Act rather than the terrorism legislation.
With the deadline of tomorrow looming for Federal, State and Territory leaders to reach agreement on the legislation, NSW Premier Morris Iemma said he would demand greater powers for judges to review proposed detention orders on their merits rather than merely on technical points of law.
Mr Howard said the advice of Government lawyers did "not really" contain anything suggesting the proposed laws were unconstitutional.
The Australian revealed yesterday that the Australian Government Solicitor's chief general counsel, Henry Burmester QC, had warned last month they represented an "untested area" of the law and there was "no guarantee" they would withstand a High Court challenge
"There was nothing in the advice that I received that gave me serious pause to think there was any problem with constitutionality and it was couched in language very similar to things I have seen in relation to many things the Government has done," Mr Howard said in Madang, New Guinea.
The Prime Minister said he did not mind changing the wording on the "shoot-to-kill" provisions covering the apprehension of terror suspects.
Despite Mr Howard's assurances, Mr Costello said ultimately only the High Court could provide a final ruling.
However, the Treasurer last night rejected any suggestion his remarks represented anything beyond a statement of legal fact.
"I defended the legislation ... I have not questioned the constitutional validity. Not for a moment," he said.
Posted by: God Save The World AKA Oztralian ||
10/27/2005 00:00 ||
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They sure are pissed this is happening on Melbourne Cup Day.
What the hell is Melbourne Cup Day?
ROME (AP) - Italy denied allegations Wednesday that it gave the United States and Britain false documents suggesting that Saddam Hussein had been seeking uranium in Africa, helping justify the case for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The documents in question detailed a purported Iraqi deal to buy 500 tons of uranium yellowcake from Niger, a claim the United States and Britain used to try to prove Saddam Hussein was seeking to develop weapons of mass destruction.
The government's denial came one day after officials said Nicolo Pollari, the director of the SISMI intelligence agency, would be questioned about the case Nov. 3 by members of a parliamentary commission overseeing secret services. Premier Silvio Berlusconi's office "categorically" refuted claims reported in a series of articles this week by daily newspaper La Repubblica that SISMI passed on to the U.S. government and Britain a dossier it knew was forged. "The facts that are narrated ... do not correspond to the truth," the government said in a statement in which it reiterated denials it had any "direct or indirect involvement in the packaging and delivery of the 'false dossier on Niger's uranium.'"
Some of the intelligence supporting the claim that Saddam was seeking uranium in Africa was later deemed unreliable. La Repubblica claimed that after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks Pollari was under pressure from Berlusconi - a firm U.S. ally - to make a strong contribution to the hunt for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The newspaper is a strong opponent of Berlusconi.
I thought it was a known fact that the document in question was created by or for the French? Think I read about that on Dan Darlings site.
Posted by: Steve ||
10/27/2005 13:34 ||
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I can't imagine Berlusconi was involved, but is their Intelligence Service any more aligned with the government than the CIA was with President Bush?
Belgrade, 27 Oct. (AKI) - Former Kosovo prime minister Ramus Haradinaj stands behind a new mysterious paramilitary group, which calls itself "Kosovo Independence Army" (KIA),the Belgrade daily âVecernje novostiâ alleged on Thursday. âThe sponsor and main ideologue of that terrorist army is Ramus Haradinaj, former prime minister of Kosovo, accused of war crimes by the Hague Tribunalâ, the paper said, quoting unnamed diplomatic sources in Pristina. The international police in Kosovo have confirmed recent reports of armed gangs operating in western Kosovo, stopping traffic and searching passengers.
Haradinaj has been accused of crimes against Serb civilians during the ethnic Albanian rebellion against Belgrade rule in 1998/99 and subsequent repression, but was released by the Tribunal last June, pending trial. Haradinaj had previously resigned as Prime Minister and surrendered himself voluntarily to the Hague-based International Tribunal for War Crimes in Former Yugoslavia (ICTY).
During the 1998/99 rebellion Haradinaj headed the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in his home region of Pec, in western Kosovo. âVecernje novostiâ said. It added that military commander of KIA was an old Haradinajâs ally, Rahman Rama, but gave no details. ICTY this month allowed Haradinaj to resume political activities while awaiting trial, but the decision was quickly revoked.
The international police in Kosovo have confirmed that armed gangs have been spotted in western Kosovo, stopping traffic and searching passengers. Two Kosovo policemen of Serbian nationality were killed in the area last month, and another four escaped injuries Wednesday night when unknown persons riddled their automobile with bullets.
KIA has sent letters to the Pristina media, saying that it would resume the KLA armed struggle if Kosovo, which has been under United Nations control since 1999, is not granted independence. The KLA was transformed into the Kosovo Protection Corps, a sort of peace-time paramilitary organization, after the withdrawal of Serbian forces from the province in 1999. Ethnic Albanians, who make a 1.7 million majority against some 100.000 Serbs remaining in the province, demand independence, which Belgrade opposes. The United Nations Security Council decided on Monday to initiate talks on the final status of Kosovo, saying it was in the best interest of both nationalities.
In a related development, Serbian police on Wednesday arrested nine policemen, charged with killing 48 ethnic Albanian civilians in the Kosovo town of Suva Reka, during 1999 conflict.
Posted by: Steve ||
10/27/2005 09:40 ||
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The formation of a potentially deadly Islamic terror cell could have been prevented if German immigration laws had been implemented correctly, the judge in a high-profile terror case said yesterday.
Judge Ottmar Breidling criticised "incredible irregularities" by the government body that deals with foreigners, when he sentenced four Arab men for their role in a plot to bomb Jewish targets in Germany.
He said the trial, which started in February 2004, "would not have been required if laws concerning foreigners had been implemented properly".
Mr Breidling said several of the accused had been convicted for drug trafficking and should have been deported a number of years ago, but had avoided this by falsifying identity documents and applications for welfare support - steps not spotted by authorities.
The comments could reinforce the concerns of security experts that Germany and other European countries are too lenient towards potential terrorists.
The case, heard in a DÃŒsseldorf court, concerned members of al-Tawhid, a group led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who since last year has supported al-Qaeda and is sought by the US as the leading militant behind the insurgency in Iraq. They were found guilty for forming a terrorist cell.
"In this case, Abu Musad al-Zarqawi should also be sitting on the defendants' bench," Mr Breidling said.
The men received jail sentences of five to eight years. Jordanians Mohammed Abu Dhess and Ismail Shalabi and Palestinian Ashraf Mohammad al-Dagma were found guilty of belonging to an Islamist militant group which planned attacks on two Jewish-owned DÃŒsseldorf discos and a Berlin community centre.
Algerian Djamel Moustfa had been charged with supporting the group and breaking German weapons laws.
*Nicolas Sarkozy, France's interior minister, yesterday unveiled anti-terrorism legislation to expand the use of video surveillance cameras, stiffen sentences for terrorists, and increase government access to telephone, internet and transport records, writes Martin Arnold in Paris.
Mr Sarkozy said the measures would help France learn from the London bombings of July 7, after which British police were able to track down those responsible by using video footage.
However, his proposals have sparked complaints from privacy and human rights groups.
Mr Sarkozy, a favourite for the 2007 presidential elections, has seized on the terrorism issue as a potential vote-winner, declaring a policy of "zero tolerance" against terrorists.
The new law will introduce surveillance cameras in airports, train stations and shops, increase access to mobile phone and internet cafe records, and increase powers to track people visiting countries known to be used for terrorist training.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
10/27/2005 02:47 ||
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"The comments could reinforce the concerns of security experts that Germany and other European countries are too lenient towards potential terrorists."
Massive F**kin Duh. This is true of everyone except Israel. But that will change. The jihadis insist.
MADRID - Amnesty International accused Spanish and Moroccan security forces on Wednesday of using exorbitant force and violating immigrantsâ rights in trying to repel waves of Africans seeking to gain a foothold in Europe over the past month.
The London-based but not necessarily reality-based human rights group said it had gathered immigrantsâ testimony during a 10-day visit to the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla, located on Moroccoâs northern coast, and to three Moroccan cities.
Amnesty said it would stamp their feet appeal for an independent, international investigation steered to a suitable conclusion of the violence that left at least 11 people dead in Ceuta and Melilla as security forces opened fire on sub-Saharan Africans who climbed over - or attempted to - razor-wire fences to cross over from Morocco into those two Spanish cities. âThe fence kills. The fence allows people to be killed,â delegation leader Javier Zuniga said.
Okay, when you guys each put a dozen refugees up in your own luxury homes in London, we'll agree that someone perhaps should be done.
Neither country has held its security forces accountable, Amnesty said. And in the groupâs talks with Spanish and Moroccan authorities, âeach side blamed the other,â said Philip Luther, another delegation member.
Posted by: Steve White ||
10/27/2005 00:00 ||
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No half as mean as I would be to a AI lawyer if I laid sight on one.
#2
How DARE those Spaniards and Moroccans defend their borders without express written permission (in triplicate and notarized, too!) from Amnesia International!
(Is it just me, or does Amnesty only have a problem with fences that keep people out as opposed to fences that herd people in? I don't recall their panties getting in a twist over the Berlin Wall, but I was a mere tot back then.)
It is more complicated than that: Moroco wants the Spanish cities of Ceuta and Melilla who are on the African side of the strait (Spanish since well before the kingdom of Morocco was created). It also claims the Canary islands where there was no trace of Arabs or Muslims at the time the Spanish landed.
So Morocco is trying the waters for a repetition of teh Gren March: a march of thousands of Moroccans over the territory of Spanish Sahara who succeeded in clamining that territory for Morocco. But the King of Morocco is afraid of the inbternal backlash in case the Spanish open fire (despite being led by that traitor, appeaser and kool-aid drinker of Zapatero) so they have used those Blacks for testing Spanish resolve. So they were allowed in fact, led to build ladders in order to climb the wall separating Ceuta from Morocco. It even seems that the Moroccans encouraged the Blacks to move by shooting at them as the Spanish have found that the wounds had been produced by bullets not used in the Spanish Army. Once the thing was over, the Moroccans collected the Blacks who han't succeeded in crossing and abandonned them in the desert.
#4
Howdy, Desert Blondie! Glad you are back. It seems Amnesty International is only interested in bashing countries that actually try to impliment their immigration laws. Amnest International wants to see world-wide open borders. Actually, I believe they want to do away with countries altogether and let the UN run things.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
10/27/2005 11:07 Comments ||
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Actually, I believe they want to do away with countries altogether and let the UN run things.
Deacon, that can be the only logical conclusion. The term "Immigrant Rights", by design, is an abstract ideal. The strategy is to combat any enforcement of sovereign border protections with international condemnation. The goal, under the guise of "Human Rights, is to replace sovereign laws with international laws prohibiting any restriction of human migration. The irony is their belief that if someone has migrated to a sovereign country illeagally they should be granted full rights under that countryâs rule of law.
#7
DG you read my mind. The practice of calling non-legal aliens immigrants is a step at removing their non-legal status. While it is true that the dictionary definition of immigrant is "one who leaves his native place of residence for permanent residence in a foreign land" it has been an accepted deffinition that an immigrant does things legally. Just my thoughts but by calling these people immigrants they then have implied rights under whichever country they are "immigrating" to. If they are non-legal aliens then they have no rights other than to be deported. Language is such a suttle thing.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
10/27/2005 12:21 Comments ||
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Howdy back, Deacon Blues!
Lovely scenario you describe, JFM. If true, it sheds a whole new light on things.
Sea, I think it was part of al-Andalus at one time. Pretty much all of southern Spain was, if I'm correct.
#9
The province of Andalucia is only the South of Spain (Granada, Sevilla, Cordoba, Almeria, Jaen) but in Arab parliance Al Andalus probably means the considerably larger territories who once belonged to the Caliphate of Cordoba (Murcia, Valencia and even Zaragoza). Of course for Saudis and Al Quaidists it is the whole of Spain since during seven years the Muslims had total control of Spain.
AMSTERDAM - Tackling Islamic extremism âwhere it turns upâ must be a key plank of The Netherlandsâ fight against terrorism, Dutch Justice Minister Pier Hein Donner told an anti-terrorism conference here on Wednesday, one year after the murder of filmmaker Theo van Gogh. âRadicalisation must be confronted where it turns up,â Donner said. âAll the legal measures, regulations and checks that we are introducing can fight terrorism, but they will never be enough to eradicate radicalism and its violent expression.â
âWe have to recognise that radicalisation is our problemâ and that it is taking root among Dutch citizens, the minister added.
Did someone just buy a clue?
âThe idea of tackling radicalisation where it turns up is still not very developed, but it should be part of our anti-terrorism measures,â National Anti-Terrorism Coordinator Tjibbe Herman Jan Joustra told AFP. âThatâs the purpose of this conference,â he said.
The summit, organised by the Dutch anti-terrorism agency and held almost a year after Van Goghâs murder, was entitled âOne Year After: Societyâs Response to Radicalisationâ and gathered experts on immigration, Islam and terrorism as well as government officials.
Posted by: Steve White ||
10/27/2005 00:00 ||
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âWe have to recognise that the core teachings of Islam as decreed in the Koran and Sunnah radicalisation is our problemâ and that it is taking root among Dutch citizens, the minister added.
France's interior minister presented a long-awaited anti-terrorism bill to Cabinet on Wednesday, rejecting allegations that it would trample on civil liberties. The bill would stiffen prison sentences for convicted terrorists, allow police to monitor citizens who travel to countries known for terror training camps, and broaden the use of surveillance cameras. Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, who has led the effort to strengthen France's laws against terrorism in response to the July bombings in London, rejected claims the proposed measures will create a police state.
Similar concerns have been raised by legal experts and activists in the United States about the Patriot Act, which authorized expanded surveillance of terror suspects, increased use of material witness warrants to hold suspects incommunicado and secret proceedings in immigration cases. "My job is to ensure the safety of people," Sarkozy told reporters following Wednesday's Cabinet meeting.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/27/2005 00:00 ||
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Another Charter Member of the John Kerry School of Hair DesignTM.
#2
Oh, well, I must be monomaniacal, since I always comment on Sarko while I'm usually discreet, but I can't stand the guy.
Basically, he's a two-faced power hungry wannabe-president, only good thing about him is that in words at least he's more atlantist and pro free-market than the usual strain of french pols.
Oh, and he really pisses off Shirac, that's a good thing too.
That said...
In no particular order (and I'm certainly missing some) : he's a big proponent of affirmative action geared toward muslims (now in national police, as he recently said), he wants aliens to vote, he wants to redesign the 1905 law of State-Church separation so mosque can be State-funded, he repelled the law that allowed the expellation of foreign criminals, he was the interior minister who established the muslim brotherhood-dominated CFCM (french council of islam), he advocates restarting economical immigration with quotas, the french muslim fundies supposedly call him "our buffoon" (that doesn't prevent him from going to ramadan break dinners),...
All he can do is be tough on automobile driver, soccer hooligan, and use his minister position to defeat the Shiraq plots against him (such as the media offensive about him being cuckolded and left by his wife after being caught "in the act" with an intern).
See this
http://www.france-echos.com/zone.php?cle=179
to get a partisan but accurate IMHO view of him (in french).
I hope I'm not being boring with this particular topic! ;-)
Sorry!
Tuesday, October 25, 2005; Page A21 -
The Judith Miller-Valerie Plame-Scooter Libby imbroglio is being reduced to a simple narrative about the origins of the Iraq war. Miller, the story goes, was an anti-Saddam Hussein, weapons-of-mass-destruction-hunting zealot and was either an eager participant or an unwitting dupe in a campaign by Bush administration officials and Iraqi exiles to justify the invasion. The New York Times now characterizes the affair as "just one skirmish in the continuing battle over the Bush administration's justification for the war in Iraq." Miller may be "best known for her role in a series of Times articles in 2002 and 2003 that strongly suggested Saddam Hussein already had or was acquiring an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction." According to the Times's critique, she credulously reported information passed on by "a circle of Iraqi informants, defectors and exiles bent on 'regime change' in Iraq," which was then "eagerly confirmed by United States officials convinced of the need to intervene in Iraq." Many critics outside the Times suggest that Miller's eagerness to publish the Bush administration's line was the primary reason Americans went to war. The Times itself is edging closer to this version of events.
There is a big problem with this simple narrative. It is that the Times, along with The Post and other news organizations, ran many alarming stories about Iraq's weapons programs before the election of George W. Bush. A quick search through the Times archives before 2001 produces such headlines as "Iraq Has Network of Outside Help on Arms, Experts Say"(November 1998), "U.S. Says Iraq Aided Production of Chemical Weapons in Sudan"(August 1998), "Iraq Suspected of Secret Germ War Effort" (February 2000), "Signs of Iraqi Arms Buildup Bedevil U.S. Administration" (February 2000), "Flight Tests Show Iraq Has Resumed a Missile Program" (July 2000). (A somewhat shorter list can be compiled from The Post's archives, including a September 1998 headline: "Iraqi Work Toward A-Bomb Reported.") The Times stories were written by Barbara Crossette, Tim Weiner and Steven Lee Myers; Miller shared a byline on one.
Many such stories appeared before and after the Clinton administration bombed Iraq for four days in late 1998 in what it insisted was an effort to degrade Iraqi weapons programs. Philip Shenon reported official concerns that Iraq would be "capable within months -- and possibly just weeks or days -- of threatening its neighbors with an arsenal of chemical, biological and even nuclear weapons." He reported that Iraq was thought to be "still hiding tons of nerve gas" and was "seeking to obtain uranium from a rogue nation or terrorist groups to complete as many as four nuclear warheads." Tim Weiner and Steven Erlanger reported that Hussein was closer than ever "to what he wants most: keeping a secret cache of biological and chemical weapons." "To maintain his chemical and biological weapons -- and the ability to build more," they reported, Hussein had sacrificed over $120 billion in oil revenue and "devoted his intelligence service to an endless game of cat and mouse to hide his suspected weapons caches from United Nations inspections."
In 1999 Weiner reported that "Iraq's chances of rebuilding a secret arsenal look good." Hussein was "scouring the world for tools to build new weapons." He might "be as close to building a nuclear weapon -- perhaps closer -- than he was in 1991." In 2000 Myers reported that Iraq had rebuilt 12 "missile factories or industrial sites" thought to be "involved in Iraq's efforts to produce weapons of mass destruction" and had "continued its pursuit of biological and chemical weapons."
The Times's sources were "administration officials," "intelligence officials," "U.N. weapons inspectors" and "international analysts." The "administration officials" were, of course, Clinton officials. A number of stories were based not on off-the-record conversations but on public statements and documentation by U.N. inspectors.
From 1998 through 2000, the Times editorial page warned that "without further outside intervention, Iraq should be able to rebuild weapons and missile plants within a year" and that "future military attacks may be required to diminish the arsenal again." Otherwise, Iraq could "restore its ability to deliver biological and chemical weapons against potential targets in the Middle East." "The world," it said, "cannot leave Mr. Hussein free to manufacture horrific germs and nerve gases and use them to terrorize neighboring countries."
Times editorials insisted the danger from Iraq was imminent. When the Clinton administration attempted to negotiate, they warned against letting "diplomacy drift into dangerous delay. Even a few more weeks free of inspections might allow Mr. Hussein to revive construction of a biological, chemical or nuclear weapon." They also argued that it was "hard to negotiate with a tyrant who has no intention of honoring his commitments and who sees nuclear, chemical and biological weapons as his country's salvation." "As Washington contemplates an extended war against terrorism," a Times editorial insisted, "it cannot give in to a man who specializes in the unthinkable."
Another Times editorial warned that containment of Hussein was eroding. "The Security Council is wobbly, with Russia and France eager to ease inspections and sanctions." Any approach "that depends on Security Council unity is destined to be weak." "Mr. [Kofi] Annan's resolve seems in doubt." When Hans Blix was appointed to head the U.N. inspectors, the editors criticized him for "a decade-long failure to detect Iraq's secret nuclear weapons program before the gulf war" and for a "tendency to credit official assurances from rulers like Mr. Hussein." His selection was "a disturbing sign that the international community lacks the determination to rebuild an effective arms inspection system." The "further the world gets from the gulf war, the more it seems willing to let Mr. Hussein revive his deadly weapons projects." Even "[m]any Americans question the need to maintain pressure on Baghdad and would oppose the use of force. But the threat is too great to give ground to Mr. Hussein. The cost to the world and to the United States of dealing with a belligerent Iraq armed with biological weapons would be far greater than the cost of preventing Baghdad from rearming."
The Times was not alone, of course. On Jan. 29, 2001, The Post editorialized that "of all the booby traps left behind by the Clinton administration, none is more dangerous -- or more urgent -- than the situation in Iraq. Over the last year, Mr. Clinton and his team quietly avoided dealing with, or calling attention to, the almost complete unraveling of a decade's efforts to isolate the regime of Saddam Hussein and prevent it from rebuilding its weapons of mass destruction. That leaves President Bush to confront a dismaying panorama in the Persian Gulf," including "intelligence photos that show the reconstruction of factories long suspected of producing chemical and biological weapons."
This was the consensus before Bush took office, before Scooter Libby assumed his post and before Judith Miller did most of the reporting for which she is now, uniquely, criticized. It was based on reporting by a large of number of journalists who in turn based their stories on the judgments of international intelligence analysts, Clinton officials and weapons inspectors. As we wage what the Times now calls "the continuing battle over the Bush administration's justification for the war in Iraq," we will have to grapple with the stubborn fact that the underlying rationale for the war was already in place when this administration arrived.
Robert Kagan, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Transatlantic Fellow at the German Marshall Fund, writes a monthly column for The Post.
Posted by: Bobby ||
10/27/2005 00:00 ||
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Lol. Kagan just took a dump on the MSM living room rug. And they published it, lol. Musta been in the contract.
WaPo just made a very very very tiny down payment on its mind-numbingly enormous public debt for disinformation, distortion, and agenda-driven BDS lies.
kudos
#2
Well, they could afford to take a hard line when Clinton was president - they knew he wouldn't do anything of substance and they could look like studs. But when cowboy Bush took office they had to tone it done because they figured he would do something, especially after 9/11.
The U.S. Army is cutting the initial training course for Special Forces troops from 63 to 48 weeks. It will still take from 20 to 30 months to complete all necessary training, but the cut in the initial training is driven more by the increased number of candidates being trained than anything else. In 2001, the army got 282 new Special Forces troopers through the initial school, compared to 617 last year. The goal is to get the number up to 750 a year, and then take it even higher.
Perhaps more important has been the many changes made to the training as a result of recent combat experience. For example, the troops fire a lot more live ammunition, and use foreign languages more during the training, rather than waiting for troops to go through separate language and combat courses. Another big change is lots and lots of combat experienced instructors. These guys make a major difference. The combat experience has a lot to do with the many changes in the training.
The Special Forces has always been understrength. The typical twelve man âA Teamâ usually goes into action short three, four or more men. Itâs not just a shortage of Special Forces qualified troops, but additional training, or special assignments (as in espionage, training or even security) that takes operators away from their teams. There are about 500 A Teams in service, but about a quarter of them are from the reserves, and cannot be used as heavily as the active duty teams.
There is also apprehension among experienced Special Forces members that the expansion will lower quality. Hard to tell just yet. There have not been any disasters on this count so far. The army has been casting a wider net in its search for candidates, and many more qualified young men have been responding for patriotic reasons, and because there is a war going on. The Special Forces are the tip of the spear in the war on terror, and many potential candidates who would not consider joining in peace time, are ready to sign up because there is plenty to do.
Posted by: ed ||
10/27/2005 17:56 ||
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US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has ordered an outside review of US special operations forces to determine how well they are positioned for a growing role in the war on terrorism, a spokesman said. Retired General Wayne Downing, a former head of the US Special Operations Command, has been selected to lead the review and is in the process of starting it up, said Lawrence DiRita, the chief Pentagon spokesman.
DiRita said Rumsfeld was seeking the outside appraisal not out of unhappiness with the special operations forces but to make sure investments in the elite commando forces were having the desired impact.
Their performance "has been outstanding," DiRita told reporters. "The question is there is a lot more they might be able to do if we know what they will need to do it." He noted that a new national strategy for the war on terrorism assigns a growing role to the special operations forces in counterterrorism and irregular warfare.
A four-year strategy review that is near completion also raised questions about special operations that prompted Rumsfeld to order the Downing review, he said. US special operations forces have been focused mainly on Iraq and Afghanistan,
Well, the SpecOps missions we hear about
while terrorist organizations operate around the world, he said. "So the question is: Is there more force structure that would be useful? Is there more capability that we would need, more language, those kinds of things?" DiRita said.
The Marine Corps, meanwhile, is expected to contribute forces to the US Special Operations Command in Tampa, Florida for the first time. Special forces from the army, air force and navy were placed under the command when it was established in 1986. But the marines, jealous of their autonomy, opted out of the joint command even though they have special units for reconnaissance and direct action. "The secretary has been squeezing the marines for four years to get into special operations, and they are doing that," DiRita said. "They will be coming soon with some specific recommendations on how they will be organizing that," he said.
National Review Online reported Thursday that the marines have been developing a special operations detachment that will be assigned to the Special Operations Command. A prototype of the unit has been fighting in Iraq, conducting raids and other special operations missions, it said.
Posted by: Steve ||
10/27/2005 13:45 ||
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#1
Marines will never be a factor in the SpecOps community until the Corps backs off and doesn't screw guys for going into a Joint Ops environment.
Quickest way to kill a USMC career is to go work for any joint SpecOps.
USMC bucket-headed view of the world is one of the thing the makes the crotch what it is, for good and for ill.
#2
Old Spook, I must be reeally slow tonight. Would you please be so kind as to translate that statement into Civilian. Thanks! And I'm awfully glad you have a little time to poke your head into Rantburg to give us your thoughts. :-)
President George Bush is urging lawmakers to approve a multi-billion dollar plan to crackdown on illegal immigration. Nearly everyone agrees the immigration system needs comprehensive reforms, but there is fierce debate on how to fix it. As many as 11 million immigrants may be working illegally in the United States, and the US chamber of Commerce says the actual number could be double that, if non working family members are included. The national federation, which represents business interests in the United States, says America's immigration system is broken and needs to be fixed; a sentiment shared by President Bush who signed a $32 billion homeland security bill this week.
Mr. Bush wants to secure America's borders and get tough on illegal immigrants, but still fill the need for foreign workers. "We need to find a way to fill that demand by matching willing employers with willing workers from foreign countries on a temporary and legal basis."
The reforms, which still need congressional approval, include a temporary guest worker program that would allow undocumented aliens to work in the US for three years before they have to return to their home countries to apply for a new work permit. Giving them an advantage over those who play by the rules.
Senators John McCain and Ted Kennedy want to give illegal immigrants an avenue to become Democratic voters legal US residents without the need to go home. Senator Kennedy says, "The principle difference is he (the President) would have those individuals return to the country, it doesn't really make a great deal of sense economically and it doesn't make sense from a humane point of view."
President Bush is opposed to granting amnesty to illegal (immigrants) already in the country and so is Senator McCain. He says his bill would require illegal immigrants to pay a $2,000 fine so they can apply for a tamper proof identification card before they can be eligible to work. "And then they would have to work for 6 years and then be eligible for a green card and get at the end of the line, which would probably take another 5 years. Anybody who calls that amnesty doesn't read the same dictionary I do, we think it's pretty tough.."
But not tough enough for the head of the National Border Patrol council. The union which represents more than 10,000 border patrol agents wants all illegal immigration halted.
T.J. Bonner claims illegal immigrants take away jobs and lower the quality of life in America. "It happened in the meat packing industry in the Midwest where you had Americans working for $18 an hour displaced by people who were recruited in Mexico to work for $6 an hour. It's happened in the drywall industry and many industries around the country."
Hector Flores, the national leader of the League of United Latin American Citizens or LULAC, says the economy would shut down if the US got rid of all illegal workers. "They're paying taxes like anybody else, using free hospital services like anyone else, using public schools like anyone else, voting Democrat like anyone else, they're working to contribute to our economy, we need to look at this very seriously and they need to be rewarded for that and not penalized." LULAC endorses what it calls the practical approach taken by Senators McCain and Kennedy. Which pretty much confirms how bad it is.
#1
McCain's a two-faced liar. Send them home - let them start the process from there. Waiting til a Donk admin's in and amnesty for votes would be the du jour policy
Posted by: Frank G ||
10/27/2005 11:16 Comments ||
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#2
Hector Flores, the national leader of the League of United Latin American Citizens or LULAC, says the economy would shut down if the US got rid of all illegal workers.
I see they don't teach capitalism in schools these days. Either the cost of labor will raise [therefore making minimum wage issues moot] to attract legal workers to do the job and therefore pass on the cost to consumers who will pay the additional direct expenses [vice indirect subsidies by government services] or the work won't be done because it is not important enough to be done in the real market place because higher costs make the product/service marginal to the market.
#3
Hector Flores, the national leader of the League of United Latin American Citizens or LULAC, says the economy would shut down if the US got rid of all illegal workers.
Posted by: Red Dog ||
10/27/2005 12:25 Comments ||
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#5
"Scare tactic."
And a full load of BS by my experience. I once worked in a restaurant in San Diego that had employed illegals in the kitchen more often than not. When a local corporation bought the place, it insisted that all it's employees be citizens or have valid work visas. Those new openings in the kitchen were immediately filled as required.
Posted by: SLO Jim ||
10/27/2005 12:29 Comments ||
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#6
If you want a 'gueat worker' program - fine. Just require that they apply from their native country - and not just mexico either bit *any* country. And do not allow them to bring their family with them. Require a sponsor (coroprate or personal) to vouch and be help responsible for them.
If they want to then immigrate then they have to go back and follow the existing LEGAL PROCESS just like everybody else.
Start cracking down damn hard on people and corporations (wall-mart anyone?) and their CEOs and CFO's personally for hiring illegal aliens with serious penalties - both financial and prison-time (and dont allow them to buy their way into club-fed either!).
Start deporting illegal aliens (of all origins - not just non-mexicans). No catch-and-release. Build guarded tent cities out in the middle of nowhere if needed until you can ship them out - just base it on LEGAL STATUS and not Race / Gender / Nationallity.
Require a tamper-proof green card (or proof-of-citizenship or guest-worker card) in order to send money out of the country.
Deny citizenship to babies born of an illegal-alien parent.
Deny all medical treatment (except life-saving of course), schools, and welfare to illegal aliens. I dont give a shit if they pay taxes or not -- if they are illegal they lose it - tough shit. Make them go home to apply for visas or guest workers - if its 'economically hard' for them too bad - they are ILLEGAL.
One more thing: send the Family Reunification crap to the dustbin where it belongs. Legal immigrants (not "guest workers") can get their petitions reviewed case-by-case, but guest workers do not get to bring their families here.
They've been called everything from visionaries to vigilantes. Whatever you think of these self-described night watchmen of the border, the Minutemen seem to be right about one thing: "It's going to grow, and it's going to surprise a lot of people who were hoping we would go away," one Minuteman says.
The Minutemen have been trying to expand beyond Arizona, to California, New Mexico and Texas. To prove their increased numbers, they launched what they call a 30-day patrol this month with thousands of volunteers turning out to guard the border in all four states. "I think our next 9/11 is going to be coming right through this Southern border," Minuteman Dr. Lee Vickers says. Vickers, a veterinarian and a rancher, is helping to lead the charge in Texas. He estimates at least 100 illegal immigrants sneak across his ranch every single night. His duty as a Minuteman, he says, is simple: "To document this flood of people, to try to assist the border patrol to catch them and to show Washington what's going on andhow bad it really is," Vickers explains.
But this month, the Minutemen also tried another tack â not just patrolling the border, but patrolling big cities with big immigrant populations. Video at source page.
They're targeting day laborers â illegal undocumented immigrants, who gather on street corners looking for work while the Minutemen say police look the other way. "We want to go after the fact that people are employing illegal aliens and that's a violation of federal law," Simcox says.
They're now videotaping those doing the hiring and if it scares off illegal day laborers like Jose Sedillo in the process, that's O.K. too. One man told Cowan he would run if Minutemen appeared at his corner. "But I'm not doing anything wrong. I'm just looking for work," he says. Other than illegal entry, tresspassing, ...
Either way, Vickers isn't proud of trying to shame his government into fixing the problem, but as he puts it: "We have no other choice, we're on our own out here," he says.
#1
They're targeting day laborers â illegal undocumented immigrants, who gather on street corners looking for work while the Minutemen say police look the other way. "We want to go after the fact that people are employing illegal aliens and that's a violation of federal law," Simcox says.
#2
Go down Little River Turnpike in Annandale ...fron 395 to 495 (many miles for those of you not familiar) and you will see thousands of day laborers lined up almost the entire distance at any daytime hour of any day. Guys in trucks, with ladders on them drive in, pick them up and drive off.
So ...providing a spot "instead of 7/11", in Herndon, is a big fat joke along the lines of how many people can you fit into a Volkswagon.
#3
Follow those trucks to the construction sites. Get the name of the contractors. Find a young and upcoming aspiring AG, and provide the platform of sueing the companies for the costs borne by taxpayers for services due to their support of the illegal labor market.
#4
I occasionally eat at a restaurant near that Herndon 7-11. I always thought it was weird with all those guys hanging out in a small parking lot, but I also thought it must be just a typical day-laborer scene that is common throughout the country. Now it gets into the national news. Along with the Islamic terrorist front companies, Herndon has really gotten itself noticed. LOL!
Posted by: jolly roger ||
10/27/2005 14:48 Comments ||
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#5
Down here in Katrina Land we have a bunch of Mexicans working hard. I want them legal, but I sure do want them. 'Regular' Americans seem too willing to collect FEMA money or unemployment, and too unwilling to subject themselves to uncomfortable temporary living accomodations (tents, cheap motels with lots of guys per room) and hard work (debris removal etc.)
We need to make an efficient way to put these guys to work legally - and I DON'T mean amnesty. How about some work permit offices in Matamoros or Juarez, where contractors can go and hire guys for a prescribed period of time.
Unbelievable. ht Lucianne
The senior Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee has vowed to defeat President George W. Bush's choice as chief Pentagon spokesman, citing an op-ed article the nominee wrote in April accusing American television networks of aiding Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations.
The comments Tuesday by the senator, Carl Levin of Michigan, during and after a committee hearing to consider the nomination of J. Dorrance Smith to be assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, cast serious doubt on Smith's chances to win approval by the full Senate.
Smith, a former ABC News producer who has worked as an adviser in both Bush administrations, said in an article in The Wall Street Journal on April 25 that the Arab satellite news channel Al Jazeera operated on behalf of terrorists and that American networks aided them by televising Al Jazeera's videotape.
"Osama bin Laden, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and Al Qaeda have a partner in Al Jazeera and, by extension, most networks in the U.S.," Smith wrote. "This partnership is a powerful tool for the terrorists in the war in Iraq."
"Al Jazeera," he added, "has very strong partners in the U.S. - ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, CNN and MSNBC. Video aired by Al Jazeera ends up on these networks, sometimes within minutes."
Levin said Tuesday that coming from someone who had been picked to be the Pentagon's chief liaison with the news media, those comments went too far. "That you would characterize them as aiders and abettors of the terrorists that attack us," he told reporters, "as far as I'm concerned that is so far over the top, it's unacceptable."
Even some Senate Republican aides said Smith's nomination appeared to be in jeopardy. After the hearing, the committee chairman, Senator John Warner, a Virginia Republican, issued an uncharacteristically tepid statement saying only that the committee would "continue to process this nomination." A White House spokesman, Frederick Jones, declined to comment except to say that the confirmation process should be allowed to run its course. First Bolton, for nothing other than being honest and plain-spoken, now Smith - for the same "offense". Asshat cretins and fools like Levin must be hounded out of government for their sheer stupidity and complicity in aiding and abetting the enemies of our nation and of Freedom. Nothing less will allows us to survive the conflict. The traditional fair-play approach will no longer suffice - and it doesn't matter if they're just stupid, willfully ignorant, or if truly on the other side - they are simply dangerous toolfools and we can no longer afford to tolerate them. Make of that what you wish.
#1
Levin is a f+ck off. The only thing interesting about this asshole is seeing how many ways be can part his hair.
Bush just needs to wait for the next recess and make several appointments.
Incidentially, did anyone watch Bolton testify to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee? The donks were as meek as can be. Even Boxer look unsually pruney.
Posted by: Captain America ||
10/27/2005 2:45 Comments ||
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#5
Using footage from muslim terrorist supporting TV is just a small part of the problem. Using foreign reporters and photographers (e.g. AP), who not only sympathize but often are working with terrorist orgs or the governments that support them, is receiving their propaganda in the guise of news. Sadly, the US has a long history of this incredible naivity, such as the highest Vietnamese employee for Time in Saigon was a Colonel in the NVA.
As for Senators like Levin and Durbin (comparing Guantanamo, the most politically correct prison ever even to the point of endangering the guards, to the Nazi, the Gulag and Pol Pot), well fuck you very much Senator, D-Al Qaeda. May you meet up with allah's storm troopers and explain your sympathy for them, just before they saw your head off.
Posted by: ed ||
10/27/2005 8:09 Comments ||
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#6
The only thing interesting about this asshole is seeing how many ways be can part his hair.
LOL a true challenge! If Levin can solve his hair problem thingy, who knows maybe perpetual lotion will become solvent.
Posted by: Red Dog ||
10/27/2005 12:44 Comments ||
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#7
Levin's state (michigan) has a fairly big and growing Muslim pouplation. LGF had photos a while back of a big group of Shia in Detroit parading around with Khomeini posters...
#8
Even the twisted BBC comments about a "connection." And just because "Palestinian Pete" Jennings is croaked that does not dismiss possible MSM collussion that some of us may have noticed.
ht Lucianne
In an analysis of Joe Wilson's credibility, The Washington Post claims his charge that President Bush lied about Iraq seeking uranium in Niger "has been validated." It hasn't â and Bush never said that.
There it was, on Page A3 of Tuesday's edition, an analysis by Post staff writers Dana Milbank and Walter Pincus, claiming: "Wilson's central assertion â disputing President Bush's 2003 State of the Union claim that Iraq was seeking nuclear material in Niger â has been validated by postwar inspections."
What Bush actually said was: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." Africa, not Niger. The "claim" was not made by Bush, but by British intelligence, and Bush said Hussein had only sought yellowcake, not that he had succeeded.
Both a bipartisan report of the U.S. Senate Committee on Intelligence and a British investigation of prewar intelligence have confirmed that when Bush uttered those famous 16 words in a 5,400-word State of the Union, his statement was "well-founded" based on intelligence that was then, and is now, credible.
Not only that, but it is former Ambassador Wilson, whose statements have been cited as "proof" Bush lied us into war, who has been found to have contradicted himself and possibly given false testimony to Congress. In an addendum to the report, Sen. Pat Roberts and two other Republicans said Wilson provided "inaccurate, unsubstantiated and misleading" information.
We know now that Wilson himself reported that former Prime Minister Ibrahim Mayaki of Niger told him of a 1999 visit by the Iraqis to discuss "commercial relations" with a country whose major export was uranium.
Wilson's debriefing upon his return from Africa, according to the report, provided "some confirmation of foreign government service reporting" that Iraq had sought uranium in Niger.
The Senate report states that British and French intelligence reported separately to the CIA about Iraqi procurement efforts in Niger, with the committee citing separate reports received from foreign intelligence services on Oct. 15, 2001; Feb. 5, 2002; and March 25, 2002, that Iraq was indeed seeking to purchase yellowcake.
As Robin Butler, head of the British investigation, says in his report: "It is accepted by all parties that Iraqi officials visited Niger in 1999. The British government had intelligence from several different sources indicating that this visit was for the purpose of acquiring uranium.Since uranium comprises almost three-quarters of Niger's exports, the intelligence was credible."
Like the Senate findings, the Butler report vindicates Bush: "We conclude also that the statement in President Bush's State of the Union Address of 28 January 2003 that 'The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa' was well-founded."
Was Prime Minister Tony Blair also lying when he told the British Parliament in 2003: "In the 1980s, Iraq purchased somewhere in the region of 200 or more tons of uranium from Niger. The evidence that we had that the Iraq government had gone back to try to purchase further amounts of uranium from Niger did not come from so-called forged documents; they came from separate intelligence."
It was once said that history is a lie agreed upon. Joe Wilson has told enough lies. He doesn't need any help from the media. Amen. Finally, there is a rumbling, a growing wave of people who have had enough lies, enough dissembling, enough disingenious agenda bullshit, enough BDS. Truth-telling is on the rise. I doubt we'll ever see justice, unless Civil War II includes burning down much of the MSM and lynching the owners, editors, and "star reporters", such as Krugman, Dowd, et al, but perhaps it will be enough just to clean out the shitholes and sterilize them with Truth... lynching only the owners and editors...
#1
I doubt we'll ever see justice, unless Civil War II includes burning down much of the MSM and lynching the owners, editors, and "star reporters", such as Krugman, Dowd, et al, but perhaps it will be enough just to clean out the shitholes and sterilize them with Truth... lynching only the owners and editors...
#2
Those who want to believe the lies will continue to subscribe to them. Those who (like myself) have had enough of the MSM merely gance their coverage to find out what the whining and wailing is about now.
My BS filter hasn't been adequate for over a decade now.
Posted by: Captain America ||
10/27/2005 18:51 Comments ||
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UNITED NATIONS - More than 2,000 companies paid about $1.8 billion in illicit kickbacks and surcharges to Saddam Hussein's government through extensive manipulation of the U.N. oil-for-food program in Iraq, according to key findings of a U.N.-backed investigation obtained by The Associated Press.
The report â to be released in full Thursday by the committee probing claims of wrongdoing in the $64 billion program â indicates that about half the 4,500 companies doing business with Iraq paid illegal surcharges on oil purchases or kickbacks on contracts to supply humanitarian goods.
The investigators reported that companies and individuals from 66 countries paid illegal kickbacks through a variety of devices while those paying illegal oil surcharges came from, or were registered in, 40 countries. The names will be included in Thursday's report but were not in the key findings obtained Wednesday by the AP.
Thursday's final report of the investigation led by former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker strongly criticizes the U.N. Secretariat and Security Council for failing to monitor the program and allowing the emergence of front companies and international trading concerns prepared to make illegal payments.
According to the findings, the Banque Nationale de Paris S.A., known as BNP, which held the U.N. oil-for-food escrow account, had a dual role and did not disclose fully to the United Nations the firsthand knowledge it acquired about the financial relationships that fostered the payment of illegal surcharges.
The oil-for-food program was one of the world's largest humanitarian aid operations, running from 1996-2003.
Under the program, Iraq was allowed to sell limited and then unlimited quantities of oil provided most of the money went to buy humanitarian goods. It was launched to help ordinary Iraqis cope with U.N. sanctions imposed after Saddam's 1990 invasion of Kuwait and became a lifeline for 90 percent of the country's population of 26 million.
But Saddam, who could choose the buyers of Iraqi oil and the sellers of humanitarian goods, corrupted the program by awarding contracts to â and getting kickbacks from â favored buyers, mostly parties who supported his regime or opposed the sanctions. He allegedly gave former government officials, journalists and U.N. officials vouchers for Iraqi oil that could then be resold at a profit.
Tracing the politicization of oil contracts, the new report said Iraqi leaders in the late 1990s decided to deny American, British and Japanese companies allocations to purchase oil because of their countries' opposition to lifting sanctions on Iraq. At the same time, it said, Iraq gave preferential treatment to France, Russia and China which were perceived to be more favorable to lifting sanctions and were also permanent members of the Security Council.
Volcker's previous report, released in September, said lax U.N. oversight allowed Saddam's regime to pocket $1.8 billion in kickbacks and surcharges in the awarding of contracts during the program's operation from 1997-2003.
According to the new findings, Iraq's largest source of illicit income from the oil-for-food program was the more than $1.5 billion from kickbacks on humanitarian contracts.
The smuggling of Iraqi oil outside the program in violation of U.N. sanctions poured much more money â $11 billion â into Saddam's coffers during the same period, according to a finding in the new report.
Volcker's Independent Inquiry Committee calculated that more than 2,200 companies worldwide paid kickbacks to Iraq in the form of "fees" for transporting goods to the interior of the country or "after-sales-service" fees, or both.
The report to be released Thursday chronicles Saddam's manipulation of the program and examines in detail 23 companies that paid kickbacks on humanitarian contracts including Iraqi front companies, major food providers, major trading companies, and major industrial and manufacturing companies.
According to the findings, the program was just under three years old when the Iraqi regime began openly demanding illicit payments from its customers. The report said that while U.N. officials and the Security Council were informed, little action was taken.
The report is the fifth by Volcker and wraps up a year-long, $34 million investigation that has faulted Secretary-General Kofi Annan, his deputy, Canada's Louise Frechette, and the Security Council for tolerating corruption and doing little to stop Saddam's manipulations. The investigation also accused Benon Sevan, the former head of the U.N. oil-for-food program, of taking $147,000 in illegal kickbacks.
#1
Interesting. The Torygraph had a few other observations:
The New York Times newspaper said three members of the UN-established Independent Inquiry Committee had confirmed that the report would show that "the country with the most companies involved was Russia, followed by France."
Preferential treatment was given to companies from France, Russia and China, the report says, all permanent members of the Security Council, who were more favorable to lifting the 1990 sanctions than the America and Britain.
In its report issued in September, the inquiry committee found there were isolated cases of corruption by UN officials, including the head of the office overseeing the program, Benon V. Sevan. He has denied the allegations.
The inquiry found that Saddam's regime earned $1.8 billion through the oil-for-food scandal but earned even more by sidestepping sanctions and smuggling oil to Jordan and Turkey.
The United States signed a waiver allowing the oil shipments to its allies, enabling Saddam's regime to secure some $10 billion, according to the inquiry committee.
I think that's backwards. The US, Israel, and other decent states should leave the UN, and it should leave the US.
Israel's vice prime minister said Iran should be expelled from the United Nations after its new president said Israel should be "wiped off the map," and Britain summoned an Iranian diplomat Thursday to protest the remarks. Italy on Thursday also condemned the words of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, telling the Iranian ambassador the comments were "unacceptable" and that they confirm worries over the political positions - and nuclear intentions - of Iran's new leadership.
Shimon Peres, Israel's vice prime minister and a Nobel peace laureate, said it was "impossible to ignore" Ahmadinejad's comments. "Since the United Nations was established in 1945, there has never been a head of state that is a U.N. member state that publicly called for the elimination of another U.N. member state," Shimon Peres told Israel Radio.
In a speech Wednesday in Tehran, Ahmadinejad said "there is no doubt that the new wave (of attacks) in Palestine will wipe off this stigma (Israel) from the face of the Islamic world." Ahmadinejad spoke during a conference called "The World without Zionism."
His comments drew widespread international condemnations. Britain's Foreign Office said Thursday it intended to summon Iran's charge d'affaires to protest Ahmadinejad's remarks, calling them "deeply disturbing and sickening." Other world governments on Wednesday issued statements criticizing the Iranian's remarks, including Britain, Canada and Germany.
In Madrid, Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos summoned Iran's ambassador to protest Ahmadinejad's comments. French Foreign Minister Jean-Baptiste Mattei also condemned the remarks "with the utmost firmness."
Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said Israel protested Iran's comments Wednesday at the United Nations but has not decided whether to ask officially for Iran's removal.
Peres said he would discuss the Iranian threat with Russia's visiting foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, on Thursday. Israel accuses Iran of developing nuclear weapons and wants the U.N. Security Council to consider sanctions against the Tehran government. Iran says its nuclear program is peaceful.
Lavrov on Wednesday brushed off Israel's calls for Security Council action, saying the matter is "too serious to be guided by politics." Forcing a 5-minute halt while everyone laughed himself silly. Lavrov said that Russia will follow the lead of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is investigating the Iranian nuclear program, and believes that talk of sanctions is premature.
#2
If this means literally kicking the Iranians out of the UN, I'm all for it. Otherwise, given the uselessness of the UN itself, it becomes a meaningless gesture.
Posted by: Captain America ||
10/27/2005 18:46 Comments ||
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Corruption and conflicts of interest at the U.N.
Few outside U.N. circles have heard of IHC Services, a private company that for years was one of hundreds of firms selling goods and services to the U.N. As a rule, the U.N. keeps secret most details of these deals. But scandals involving IHC have begun lifting the lid on how the U.N. handles taxpayers' money.
The IHC story suggests that the U.N.'s failures of governance are not confined to such special projects as the Oil for Food program. If anything, Oil for Food looks more and more like a large outcropping of U.N. business as usual. And as with Oil for Food, which ran from December 1996 until the fall of Saddam in 2003, the timeline of IHC business with the U.N. starts in December 1996. That was the month before Kofi Annan took over as secretary-general, and it is on his watch that the IHC-U.N. tale has unfolded.
Headquartered on the sixth floor of a modest midtown Manhattan high-rise, with additional offices in Milan, IHC was, until this June, one of many companies approved by the U.N. as a registered vendor to its procurement division--which handles U.N. contracting for everything from office supplies to rations for peacekeeping troops. IHC signed some deals directly with the U.N., and on others served as a go-between for third-party contractors--despite the U.N.'s officially stated preference for avoiding middlemen.
Since the U.N. handles its contracts with secrecy, the full extent of IHC's involvement in U.N. business is hard to know. But from documents seen by this writer, the amounts around 1999 involved millions of dollars; a few years later they involved scores of millions; and in the past year or two--counting IHC business partnerships--the totals reached hundreds of millions.
IHC's CEO Ezio Testa, has denied any wrong-doing. But IHC's history includes hiring the son of a U.N. official who later (and unrelated to the hiring) pled guilty to corruption in federal court. In addition, a star U.N. diplomat served as chairman of the IHC board of directors while also holding a post as personal representative of the U.N. secretary-general. On top of that, IHC appears to have had access to valuable inside information on U.N. contract bids, which in at least one documented case it shared with a company involved in the bid.
Last year, information was bubbling around in unofficial quarters that something was amiss in the U.N. procurement department. Together with Fox News executive editor George Russell, I began looking into it. A name that came to our attention was Alexander Yakovlev, a Russian staffer in the procurement department. Imagine our surprise when Mr. Yakovlev was depicted in a Feb. 3 interim report from Paul Volcker's Oil for Food probe as a defender of integrity in the U.N. procurement department, where he'd handled Oil for Food inspection contracts.
Mr. Russell and I continued our reporting, and in early May--about the time the U.N. now says its own investigation into Oil for Food began--we contacted the U.N. procurement department with questions. On June 20, our story ran on Fox News, alleging that Mr. Yakovlev, while handling at least one IHC contract, had obtained a job with IHC for his son Dmitry, and providing details of a secret offshore company and bank account set up by Mr. Yakovlev and his wife. Two days later, Alexander Yakovlev had resigned, and the U.N. had suspended IHC from its vendor list. On Aug. 8, Mr. Volcker released a report that, as a sidenote to his Oil for Food investigation, alleged that Mr. Yakovlev had taken $950,000 in bribes on $79 million worth of U.N. contracts. Mr. Yakovlev was arrested, and in a Manhattan federal court pled guilty to conspiracy, wire fraud and money-laundering in relation to his U.N. procurement activities. That federal investigation has since gone on to indict the head of the U.N. budget oversight committee, Vladimir Kuznetsov, on allegations of money-laundering.
That was far from the end of the IHC trail. Last month, we obtained IHC corporate documents showing that one of the U.N.'s most prominent personalities, Giandomenico Picco--currently a special adviser to Mr. Annan--had served as a director of IHC in 1997 and then as chairman of the IHC board from 1998 until at least February 2000. Mr. Picco's initial career with the U.N. had spanned from 1973 to 1992, and at the time he joined IHC he was in private business, running a consulting firm, GDP Associates, in New York. But during his tenure as IHC chairman, he accepted an appointment from Kofi Annan in August 1999, to serve as a U.N. under-secretary and personal representative of the secretary-general for a globetrotting project called the Dialogue of Civilizations.
During the interval in which Mr. Picco was both an official U.N. representative for Mr. Annan and chairman of the IHC board--i.e., from August 1999 to February 2000--IHC signed one multimillion dollar deal to sell portable generators to the U.N. and brokered another to supply a hostel ship for peacekeeping troops in East Timor. Mr. Picco has said he resigned as IHC chairman before that, but IHC board minutes show him as chairing the company's annual meeting on Feb. 17, 2000.
It then came to light that IHC's CEO, Ezio Testa, had sent an email providing an inside tip on confidential U.N. bidding information to a corporate officer at another company, Cyprus-based Eurest Support Services (ESS). ESS was then bidding on the aforementioned contract--which it won--to supply $62 million worth of rations to U.N. peacekeepers. Altogether, ESS, which in 2004 announced a formal partnership with IHC, has in recent years won U.N. contracts that, with add-ons and options, total $351 million. ESS has now been suspended by the U.N., which is investigating the matter.
There's more. Corporate documents show that in June, just before the first wave of this scandal went public, IHC was quietly sold--in a move that raises questions about who really owned it. The buyer was a company registered in the British Virgin Islands, whose sole representative was listed in sale documents as Peter Harris--apparently an officer with ESS's parent company, the U.K.-based Compass Group, one of the world's largest catering companies. (Compass has announced it is suspending Mr. Harris and is investigating the matter.)
IHC's seller was even more intriguing. The sole shareholder was a Luxembourg-based company, Torno S.A.H. One of the two major shareholders in Torno, who voted by proxy in a Milan meeting on June 3 to approve the sale, was a Liechtenstein-based businessman, Engelbert Schreiber, Jr. A provider of financial and legal services, he, as recently as 2000, had professional dealings with Ahmed Idris Nasreddin, a naturalized Italian citizen and former honorary consul of Kuwait in Milan who in 2002 was listed on the U.N.'s roster of "individuals and entities belonging to or associated" with Al Qaeda.
What next might turn up in the IHC saga depends on a number of investigations. But in an era when many authorities are worried about the transit of millions across borders and the enforcement of good governance, it appears the U.N. has been serving as a bazaar in which corruption, conflicts of interest and shadowy financial networks have found ways to set up shop. Behind the maze, who was the real owner of IHC during its nine years of doing big business with the U.N.? The U.N. won't say, and quite possibly does not even know. Its policy, in fact, was not even to ask. Rosset is pure class.
#1
Since the U.N. handles its contracts with secrecy
Why the hell does the UN keep contracts secret? Considering the US government's openness policy for its own contracting, I don't see why the US doesn't demand openness in UN contracting (and business in general) given that the US provides so much of the UN budget.
For weeks before Iraq's constitutional referendum this month, Iraqi guerrilla Abu Theeb traveled the countryside just north of Baghdad, stopping at as many Sunni Arab houses and villages as he could. Each time, his message to the farmers and tradesmen he met was the same: Members of the disgruntled Sunni minority should register to vote -- and vote against the constitution.
"It is a new jihad," said Abu Theeb, a nom de guerre that means "Father of the Wolf," addressing a young nephew one night before the vote. "There is a time for fighting, and a time for politics."
For Abu Theeb and many other Iraqi insurgents, this canvassing marked a fundamental shift in strategy, and one that would separate them from foreign-born fighters such as Abu Musab Zarqawi, the Jordanian who leads the group al Qaeda in Iraq.
Two years of boycotting the process had only marginalized Sunnis while Iraqi's Shiite majority gained power. And Abu Theeb's entry into politics was born partly of necessity; attacks by Shiite militias, operating inside and outside the government security apparatus, were taking an increasing toll on Sunni lives.
So at 6:30 a.m. on the day of the referendum, Oct. 15, Theeb was already at the polling center in his village, which he had scouted out days in advance. Two of his fighters took up positions. Abu Theeb and the rest of the fighters, more relaxed, propped their Kalashnikov rifles against walls or placed them on tables.
"No one will attack," Abu Theeb assured a reporter. "I made sure some wrongdoers are protecting the school," he said, jokingly referring to al Qaeda loyalists. To head off any violence, he had co-opted the group by enlisting two of its supporters as his polling site guards.
This article is based on five days of travel and interviews with Abu Theeb and his associates before and after the referendum. The reporter was allowed such access on the condition that the guerrilla commander's real name and the name of his village would not be disclosed.
It was not possible to confirm directly how many Sunnis share his views on the political process. But Iraqi and U.S. analysts in Baghdad express hope that such a shift in outlook will eventually lead large numbers of radical Sunnis to abandon their weapons permanently and take part in the political process.
For men such as Abu Theeb -- who said he shaved his bushy beard, a sign of an Islamic holy fighter, to pass more easily into and out of Baghdad -- taking part in politics is a step taken only reluctantly.
"Politics for us is like filthy, dead meat," he said, referring to pork, which is eschewed by observant Muslims. "We are not allowed to eat it, but if you are crossing through a desert and your life depends on it, God says it's okay." Even if politics gets him a result he likes, he said, he will continue to wage war against the Americans, because he views them as occupiers.
Abu Theeb's tribe has a reputation for kidnappings and executions, and election officials declined to make the trip from Baghdad to his village to operate a polling station there. Instead, an elderly local sheik, deputized by Abu Theeb and village leaders as election monitor, settled onto a wooden bench in the classroom polling center.
Men of the village trickled in. Guerrillas soon realized that the women of this deeply conservative Tigris River hamlet were not ready to leave their homes to cast ballots. So each man who came with his identity card received a stack of ballots to take back to his family.
"Nine ballots to Haji Abu Hussein," shouted the registration official, a local villager the government had certified as an election worker. Another local, also deputized by the government, handed Haji Abu Hussein a sheath of forms.
Ignoring the voting booth set up for privacy in a corner, Haji Abu Hussein stood at the table, checked "no" boxes against the Shiite-led government's proposed constitution, folded the ballots and chucked them into the ballot box.
By midday, as the flow of voters slowed, Abu Theeb's men decided to chuck the formalities as well.
Setting a ginger-bearded man at his own table, they assigned him the task of checking "no" boxes on all the ballots they could find. As they exhausted the ballots of the village's 1,500 registered voters, they telephoned Baghdad for 20,000 more ballots. Government officials sent over about 5,000.
Two days later, Abu Theeb and two insurgent clerics were sitting on the floor of a mosque debating the next step for Sunnis, and for his group: what role to play in Iraq's Dec. 15 national elections.
"We should keep all options open, even forming a coalition with Allawi," Abu Theeb advised, referring to the secular Shiite Ayad Allawi, who was prime minister in the previous U.S.-formed government. "People have problems with Islamists. We should put the secularist in front."
On Tuesday, officials in Baghdad announced that the constitution had passed. Although more than 50 percent of voters in Iraq's three Sunni-majority provinces rejected the charter, that was not enough to prevent its passage. Earlier, officials had cited signs of possible voting irregularities. But despite scenes like the one in Abu Theeb's village, they certified that the vote was on the whole fair and was binding.
It was not possible to contact Abu Theeb for his views on the outcome.
The serpentine road to Abu Theeb's village is lined with palm groves and pockmarked with craters from bombs planted by the insurgents to catch passing American and Iraqi forces.
A few thousand Sunnis from one tribe live there, almost all related. Residents trace their lineage back to the prophet Muhammad. Most are Salafis, members of a fundamentalist branch of Islam that believes life and law should be guided by a literal interpretation of the Koran, the Islamic holy book.
Women are rarely seen in public. Men wear the bushy beards and ankle-length dishdasha garments of Salafis. When the call to prayer comes five times daily from the minarets of the village's many mosques, all activity stops.
Entering the hamlet by the main road requires passing 100 yards of blast walls, concrete barriers and concertina wire. U.S. troops command the checkpoint, and masked Shiite government soldiers from the south man it. Government forces have sprayed graffiti on the blast barriers, all of it with anti-Sunni subtext. "Despite the anger of those who denounce people as infidels, democracy will prevail in Iraq," reads one message.
A narrow, bumpy farm road provides the resistance fighters with safe access into the village.
In interviews, Abu Theeb said he was born in the village four decades ago, one of five brothers. His father was an illiterate farmer who always clutched his shortwave radio and loved to talk politics.
As a young man, Abu Theeb studied law, then joined the Institute of National Security, an elite academy reserved chiefly for Sunni Arabs slated for the secret services of President Saddam Hussein.
Abu Theeb had strong pride in his country, but it was broken in 1991 by the Persian Gulf War. "I hated the government," he said. "I realized that all what they were telling us about the nation and the leader was false. They had neither pride nor honor."
Abu Theeb took a four-year leave from the secret services and joined an Islamic religious school. He became enraptured, he said, with the teachings of Ibn Tamiya, a 13th-century scholar, and graduated as a cleric. When his leave was up, he went back to his job at General Security, one of Hussein's feared security agencies. Abu Theeb said he stayed until U.S. troops captured the capital in 2003.
The sight of American soldiers in the Iraqi city was an unspeakable outrage to him. "I roamed the streets with a dagger in my pocket," he said. "I was too ashamed to come back home and see my family while Baghdad was under occupation."
Abu Theeb met a group of Syrians who had come to Baghdad. Like him, they were looking for a fight with the Americans, so he took them to his home village and formed a jihad cell.
It started off with rocket and small-arms attacks on U.S. convoys, he said. Later, a fellow Salafi fighter taught him how to set a roadside bomb using simple techniques -- a TV remote control and some artillery shells.
A former Iraqi army general who visited the village laid down ground rules for the group: Roadside bombs were the most effective weapon, but they should always be planted at least 1 1/2 miles outside the village, so as to spare its people retaliation by the Americans.
Abu Theeb's group kept up the attacks. "Something like fire was inside us," he said. ". . . When the infidel conquers your home, it's like seeing your women raped in front of your eyes and like your religion being insulted every day."
Abu Theeb said he eventually sent the Syrians home, feeling that foreigners had no role in the resistance. He and other Salafi fighters formed the Anger Brigade, which has also kidnapped people it perceives as collaborating with the Americans and their Iraqi allies.
The group was dominated in its first months by fundamentalists such as Abu Theeb who saw armed jihad as a religious duty equal to praying and fasting. To hit a U.S. target, they believed, was a sign that God was with them. "By the help of God, this America with its might and glory would be hit by a bunch of barefoot but pure men, in dishdashas with rusty weapons," Abu Theeb said.
After nearly a year, others joined the group: local men with moderate religious views and, like Abu Theeb, prior service with Hussein's government who had grown increasingly angry over the American occupation.
Abu Theeb recounted how once he was driving to Baghdad carrying a sack filled with anti-tank rocket detonators. American soldiers stopped him at a checkpoint, ordered him out and began searching his car.
"I prayed to God. I told him, 'God, if I am doing what I am doing for your sake, then spare me. If not, let them get me,' " he recounted. "The American soldier opened the trunk where I had the sack filled with rocket detonators. He moved it away and started to search. He finished and asked me to leave. I knew then I was blessed by God."
But if God had spared Abu Theeb, he didn't spare his family. One brother and a nephew were killed early on fighting the Americans, he said. A second brother was killed several weeks ago when the roadside bomb he was planting exploded.
Eight months ago, another group of Syrian men came calling on Abu Theeb. Identifying themselves as part of al Qaeda in Iraq, they asked for his cooperation to establish the organization in that area. The group's leader "told me that he had support and money and he wanted to open a new front here. I asked him, 'And what about the village? Do you want this to become a new Fallujah?' " Abu Theeb said, referring to the insurgent stronghold all but razed and emptied by U.S. forces last year.
"When al Qaeda came here, I was the first to fight it," Abu Theeb said. "They go to the clerics and say, 'Denounce this man, and if not, your blood will be spilled.' They kill and slaughter too easily."
Abu Theeb and other Salafi clerics and Iraqi insurgent leaders north and south of Baghdad talk of a growing rift between their camp and groups that are foreign-led and supported by al Qaeda.
Initially, al Qaeda in Iraq gained support in parts of the Sunni community for its meticulous planning, its ferocious fighting and its funding. "If it wasn't for al Qaeda fighting alongside the Sunnis in Iraq, the whole battle would have had a different outcome," said Abu Hafsa, a regional guerrilla commander based north of Baghdad.
"They have experience in fighting; they did very clever stuff," Abu Theeb agreed. "They attacked all the centers of the Iraqi state and by doing so prevented the Americans from creating a puppet state that they can hand everything to. The Iraqi resistance was preoccupied with fighting the Americans only and couldn't see that strategic goal."
"Lots of the mujaheddin groups are in need of money and weapons, so they join the umbrella of the al Qaeda for support. But they differ with them in ideology," said Abu-Qutada, a guerrilla leader based south of Baghdad.
But many fundamentalist Sunnis object to al Qaeda's rigid interpretation of Islamic law. Taliban-style Islamic justice already is being enforced in the western Iraqi cities and towns under Zarqawi's control.
"Al Qaeda believes that anyone who doesn't follow the Koran literally is a kafir and should be killed," explained Abu Theeb, using a term for apostate, or a believer who abandons the faith. "This is wrong. We can't take Islamic theory from the time of the prophet and implement the same rules in the 21st century."
Abu Theeb argues that al Qaeda in Iraq's religious views stand to alienate not only Iraqi nationalists but supporters in Syria and other Persian Gulf countries.
More importantly, al Qaeda's war on Shiite civilians-- it has bombed mosques, buses and other places where Shiites gather -- is drawing the wrath of Iraqi government security forces and Shiite militias.
Scores of Sunnis have been found bound and shot after being abducted from their homes -- some rounded up just because of their tribal name, their families claim. Many Sunnis blame the killings on paramilitary units of Iraq's Interior Ministry, which includes many veterans of Shiite militias. Fearing the raids, more than 300 Sunni families have come to Abu Theeb's area, leaving their homes in Baghdad.
Still, for Abu Theeb, turning in unwanted foreign guests in his area is not an option. "We know them all -- there are no more than 15 of them here. But what can we do with them, hand them to the Americans or the Shiite government?" the guerrilla leader asked. "That's not allowed in our religion."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
10/27/2005 02:49 ||
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AMMAN - Lawyers representing Saddam Hussein announced on Wednesday that they will boycott the special tribunal trying the ousted Iraqi president until they are given better security. âIn view of the dangerous security conditions in Iraq and their impact on Iraqi members of the defence team, along with the never-ending threats against them and their families ... a decision has been taken to fully boycott the Iraqi Special Tribunal,â said a statement issued by the Jordan-based team including lead counsel Khalil Al Dulaimi.
The decision followed the killing of Saadun Janabi, an attorney representing one of Saddamâs co-defendants, just a day after the opening of the trial.
Posted by: Steve White ||
10/27/2005 00:00 ||
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#1
Lol. If they're not Sunnis, this should give them honorary status, heh. Face the music, fools. Rope-a-dope tactics won't work. The boy's bad, bad to the bone, and he's gonna burn. You wanna bail? Then bail. Asstards.
#6
If the French could bring their Vichy to trial, then the Iraqis can do the same. They'll do a better job of cleaning house than the UN types. And how long has the Slobadon Molosavic circus trial been running?
WASHINGTON - The US ambassador to Iraq said on Wednesday that political progress and improving home-grown security forces there may allow the United States to cut its military presence in 2006. âI do believe itâs possible that we could adjust our forces, downsizing them in the course of next year. Thatâs possible given the positive political development and the continuing growth in the credibility of the Iraqi forces,â Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said at the White House.
Posted by: Steve White ||
10/27/2005 00:00 ||
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#1
Gosh, that's almost like common sense, y'know? Mebbe he should sit down with General Skeery and explain it to him.
#5
Nonsense. The American people were prepared to continue support for the Viet Nam war until Johnson caved. They'll keep supporting this one. Taxes, spending, the economy, gas prices and immigration are all much more important to the 2006 elections. The donks will have a big issue and the MSM will bury us in coverage, but that's going to happen regardless of how many troops are "drawn down". And it won't change enough votes to make a difference.
Three Sunni Arab groups joined forces Wednesday to field candidates in December's elections provided for under the newly ratified constitution which many Sunnis opposed. But a group of hard-line Sunni clerics denounced the constitution and said they will not join the political process. Those contradictory statements signaled confusion within the minority Sunni Arab community, which forms the core of the insurgency, over how to go forward after it failed to block ratification of the new constitution in the Oct. 15 referendum.
Leaders of the three Sunni groups — the General Conference for the People of Iraq, the Iraqi Islamic Party and the Iraqi National Dialogue — announced they would field a joint slate of candidates in the Dec. 15 balloting and work together in the new parliament to promote Sunni interests. "This alliance aims to provide Iraqis with a national slate for the elections," Ayad al-Samarraie, a senior official of the Iraqi Islamic Party, told reporters.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/27/2005 00:00 ||
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Iraq's top Shiite cleric has decided to withhold his endorsement of a Shiite coalition that swept last January's general election, rejecting repeated pleas by senior politicians for him to reconsider, associates on both sides said Wednesday. The move by the Iranian-born Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani reflected the cleric's disappointment with the performance of Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari's Shiite-led government, according to three associates of the cleric who are in regular contact with him. Their comments represent the first known rift between the prominent ayatollah and the Shiite political parties he has supported since the ouster of Saddam Hussein in 2003.
A senior official of al-Jaafari's Dawa party, Ali al-Adeeb, confirmed that al-Sistani had not "yet" agreed to endorse the Shiite alliance. Lack of an al-Sistani endorsement will reduce the chances that the Shiite coalition, formally known as the United Iraqi Alliance, can repeat its Jan. 30 success in the next election, set for Dec. 15. Al-Sistani's support was credited for enabling the alliance to win 140 of parliament's 275 seats, allowing it to form a government with the Kurds. Failure to repeat such success could significantly alter Iraq's political landscape, raising the possibility of a coalition government — perhaps without the big Shiite religious parties with ties to Iran.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/27/2005 00:00 ||
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#1
"The al-Sistani associates said the ayatollah's decision to withhold his support from the coalition arose from the government's failure to improve security, services - such as power and water supplies - or end persistent fuel shortages.
Al-Sistani also was concerned about what his associates said was the government's inability to curtail the influence of militias, fight corruption and stop neighboring countries from meddling in Iraq's internal affairs."
Since this came from "spokesmen", not directly from Mr Thousand Yard Stare, who knows if this is what the squirrel really believes --- BUT it would be one hell of an improvement - and I'd be happy to eat a flock of crows if this fool would get behind such ideas and make them happen, not just sit on his Islamic Olympus and mutter to his navel.
I am particularly pleased that this withdrawal of support might end in getting rid of the current crop of moron Shi'ites from the key power positions. They are, in a word, disasters. Utterly without focus or effective plans. Allawi was 100x better, IMHO.
On a cautionary note - fragmenting this Shi'a alliance may be good for the Kurds and the 'semi-secularists' like Allawi, but it could also open up cracks for the infernal Sunnis, too. That really would mean gridlock. Fucking Sunnis.
Cut the Kurds, and any intelligent modern Iraqis who wish to join them, loose from this mess.
#3
Sistani is right. Security is lame in the southern region and the miltias are prominent in the police, many of the police are captive to the local militas.
Posted by: Captain America ||
10/27/2005 2:58 Comments ||
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Sistani is taking the traditional Shia position that politics and religion are different spheres and should be kept apart. The aberation of Iran is that Khomeinei took essentially a Sunni position on that issue. But Najaf isn't Qom and the Iraqi Shia schools have always stressed this point.
Sistani has done a fairly decent job of providing leadership to the Shias while not going back on his apolitical posture IMO.
BAGHDAD: Iraqi Sunni leaders said on Wednesday they would focus on pressing US forces to pull out after failing to block a controversial constitution, hoping a US death toll of 2,000 will encourage Washington to withdraw. âOur political programme will focus more on getting the Americans out of Iraq,â Hussein al-Falluji, a prominent Sunni who took part in talks on the constitution, told Reuters. âOur message to the American administration is clear: get out of Iraq or set a timetable for withdrawal or the resistance will keep slaughtering your soldiers until judgment day.â
The death of an army sergeant pushed the US military death toll in Iraq to the symbolic figure of 2,000 on Tuesday, but President George W Bush warned more sacrifices were needed before US troops could come home.
I think I'm slowly coming around to the opinion that we should abolish their government and rule the place with an iron hand as a colony, but I guess it's too late for that...
Posted by: Fred ||
10/27/2005 00:00 ||
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#1
Heh, I could be convinced, Fred. Regards the Sunnis, well of course they want us to leave, lol. We're the ones who ruined their perfect little dictatorship. I'd prefer they were utterly decimated - and I mean decimated with extreme prejudice. They will never stop, otherwise. I still prefer partition as the answer - this clusterfuck Islamic Federalism, Arab-style, will eventually fall apart because the Sunnis are simply irredeemable. It will not work.
The Kurds should not be shackled to the Arab losers.
#2
Give them the Canadian model of government: create 3 provinces that together loosely resemble a country, with one province forever locked in a struggle for independence, holding referundums every now and then to determine whether they should secede or not.
But then again...that would require at least a semblance of civility, so forget it. Plus they would never agree on taxation policy.
Posted by: Rafael ||
10/27/2005 1:08 Comments ||
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In fact, let's give them Paul Martin. I insist.
Posted by: Rafael ||
10/27/2005 1:10 Comments ||
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Rafael, that would be cruel and unusual punishment. ;-)
#5
Is there some secret ceremony these guys go through that alters the brain chemistry? It seems that most of them are given to such florid speech patterns that make even the most grandiloquent Foghorn Leghorn of a Senator pale with envy. Their public, and I suspect their private as well, statements are so detached from reality that a diminished mental capacity defense would work. If we took them at their word, we would back off and bomb them until the rubble bounced and then we would nuke them to put a green glass seal on the hole. Some days I think we should.
#6
âOur message to the American administration is clear: get out of Iraq or set a timetable for withdrawal or the resistance will keep slaughtering your soldiers until judgment day.â
At first glance she does not arouse any suspicion - a young Palestinian woman in her first months of pregnancy, covered in a headscarf, and speaking softly. Yet had Samar Ibrahim Sabih not been nabbed, Hamas terrorists would have almost certainly joined the Islamic Jihad by now in carrying out suicide bomb attacks in the heart of Israel. Instead, the woman meant to train Hamas suicide bombers in the West Bank is currently facing a Shin Bet interrogation. How about a Shin Break interrogation?
Itâs hard to believe that this young, quiet religious woman is a seasoned commando fighter, an expert in making suicide bomb belts and explosive devices, and the first woman who has turned into âan engineerâ in the service of terror. Not once you realize what "quiet" religion she follows.
Palestinian female terrorists are not a new phenomenon. In recent years, terror organizations have not hesitated to send women to commit suicide bombings, stab soldiers, and smuggle explosive devices. But Samer Ibrahaim Sabih was the first Palestinian woman to become a terror leader and planner. Her involvement in terrorism began in 2003, when she was recruited by Muhammad Tari, a Hamas activist who lived in her neighborhood in Jabaliya, Gaza. She was then a student of Arab literature in the Islamic University of Gaza, and Tari knew that she was planning to marry and move to Tul Karem after her studies. Breaking the Glass Ceiling™ with Semtex.
At that time, Tari was faced with a âproblemâ: He had recruited Yasser Muhammad Salah, son of the Ramallah police chief, into the ranks of Hamas, and ordered him to set up a Hamas terror cell and to prepare its members for attacks. The West Bank, however, lacked experts in explosives that could train the cell. Tari then decide to try and âimportâ an engineer from Gaza, and Samar, his neighbor, was an ideal candidate.
It wasnât hard to convince her to join Hamas. Samarâs family already identified with Fatah, but she became more religious during her studies, and joined the Islamic student bloc. From there, the path to Hamas was short.
Three months ago, Hamasâ first female commando force was exposed. In Gaza's fields, Palestinian women were trained to plant explosives, fire light weaponry and sniper rifles, and launch mortar shells and Qassam rockets. Samer Ibrahim Subuh joined this force, where she became an expert in preparing fertilizer-based suicide bomb explosive belts.
Her first student was her husband, who she taught how to mix chemicals and to turn them into bombs. A short time later, her husband discovered that Samar was pregnant, but this did not prevent her from continuing her plans for murder. âShe integrated well into Hamas infrastructure in the West Bank,â a Shin Bet source said. âShe became an instructor and explosives expert, while displaying a high degree of professionalism.â
Among others, Sabih directed the terror cell leader behind the abduction and murder of Israeli citizen Sasson Nuriel last month.
Hamas terrorists were determined to protect their first female engineer. Samar and her husband, Ramzi, agreed that should they be detained by the Shin Bet, they will both claim that the husband was in fact the one who taught his wife the âart of explosives,â and not the other way around, in order to hide the Gaza connection. However, the plan failed. On September 29 at 2 p.m., IDF troops and Shin Bet agents raided the Sabih family home and apprehended Samer. A day later, her husband was also taken into custody.
Can we do a reverse abortion? Save the child and kill her?
The investigation into the Bali bombings nearly a month ago has yet to make any breakthroughs, leaving counterterrorism officials and experts with an edgy sense that the terrorist network in Southeast Asia has become smarter and more sophisticated, both in carrying out attacks and in avoiding detection.
Compounding the difficulties of the investigation, Indonesian officials and Western security specialists now say that preparations for the attack were made in the Philippines; these included training the suicide bombers and assembling the backpack bombs, which had detonation wires sown into the straps.
Investigators are operating under the theory that the backpacks were made by a man, Dulmatin, who is No. 3 on the Bush administration's list of the most wanted terrorists, and was a mastermind of the first Bali bombings three years ago. Mr. Dulmatin, who uses only one name, was trained in explosives at camps run by Al Qaeda in Afghanistan in the 1990's. The possibility of more attacks like the one in Bali on Oct. 1 - small bombs carried by suicide bombers - is very high, especially in Bali, Indonesian and Western officials said this week. Some contend that the men and materials are already in the country, having entered from the Philippines.
No arrests have been made in the current case, and to the surprise and dismay of the authorities, the three suicide bombers have still not been identified even though their faces have appeared on television, in newspapers and on fliers distributed throughout the archipelago. Indonesian authorities fear that relatives of the bombers and villagers who know the bombers have not come forward because they sympathize with the terrorists' cause.
Nor have the explosives used in the bombs been identified, which leads some investigators to say they believe that the terrorists used an unusual method. Residue from the blasts, which killed 19 people and 3 suicide bombers, is being examined at labs in London and Canberra, Australia, as well as in Jakarta, investigators said.
The lack of progress contrasts with the investigation into the attacks on the Bali nightclubs, in October 2002, when a van packed with explosives and a suicide bomber killed 202 people. Three weeks after the attack, a principal plotter was arrested, and other arrests soon followed.
In the current investigation, the police are stymied and frustrated.
"These terrorists learned from Bali I," said Indonesia's senior counterterrorism official, Ansyaad Mbai. "The planning was more sophisticated," he said in a recent interview. "The size of the bomb was smaller." He noted that the bomber at one of the restaurants, who was caught on an amateur video, was walking normally, and did not appear to be struggling under any appreciable weight. A smaller bomb may not be as deadly, but a larger bomb, like the one used in the first Bali attacks, has a "higher possibility of being discovered," he said.
The police had far more evidence after the first Bali attacks, including the remains of the van. A chassis number the bombers had not scratched out led to the quick arrest of a principal perpetrator.
The first Bali bombers had to bring equipment, including the van and materials for making the bomb, into the city. A dozen or so men were involved in the operation, and they spent a least a week in Bali assembling the bomb. Afterward, the police found people in Bali who remembered the men, and the motorcycle was found near a mosque.
In the recent bombing, investigators say they believe that only a small group was involved, and that the bombers might have entered the country a day or two before the attack, which would severely reduce the number of people who saw them. The police say they do not know if the men brought the backpacks with them, or if someone else did.
Two of the principal bomb makers in the first attacks, Azahari Husin and Dulmatin, are prime suspects in the recent attacks.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
10/27/2005 02:56 ||
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#1
Funny, I have "an edgy sense" that the Indos are just as uninterested and malignant as before.
The government will try to increase it's militia of Islamic conservative gunmen (the Basij) to over a million men, with the formation of 2,000 battalions. They may not be able to get that many volunteers, but it certainly shows the government is willing to fight to maintain power. The Islamic conservatives believe they have the moderates and reformers (who comprise, according to opinion and election polls, some 80 percent of the population) on the run. The Islamic conservatives are willing to fight to maintain control of the government, and their opponents, at least so far, are not.
Several Islamic radical factions are able to operate freely by the government. Some of these groups encourage, fund and arm Islamic conservative Shia Arab groups in southern Iraq. Others provide shelter for al Qaeda leaders looking for a place to hide. Still others support Islamic terror groups operating in and around Israel.
Posted by: ed ||
10/27/2005 18:06 ||
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PARIS - The call by Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad on Wednesday for Israel to be "wiped off the map" has drawn instant and bitter condemnation, with Israel urging Iran's expulsion from the United Nations, and other countries saying that Tehran should now definitely be hauled before the UN Security Council over its nuclear program.
Ahmadinejad's outburst, however, also signifies deep rifts within the country between his administration and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and his small clique that ultimately controls the levers of power.
Populist Ahmadinejad, a veteran of Iran's hardline Revolutionary Guards, took office in August after scoring an unexpectedlandslide win in June's presidential elections, in which he was backed by Khamenei at the expense of the more moderate former president, Hashemi Rafsanjani.
However, contrary to most predictions, the victory of Ahmadinejad, following the rout of reformists in February's legislative elections, has not led to a "homogenization" of power in the country.
This is evidenced by Iran's stance with the international community over its nuclear program, with its position swinging wildly from reconciliation to confrontation. Most recently, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) voted to declare Iran in "non-compliance" with the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and next month will decide whether or not to send it to the United Nations Security Council for possible sanctions.
Ahmadinejad's performance on Wednesday puts Iran firmly on the path of confrontation. "The danger of such a radical statesman [Ahmadinejad] is that by knotting religious beliefs with the nuclear issue, it makes for an explosive issue that will explode in the face of all Iranians," an Iranian analyst told Asia Times Online, adding that Ahmadinejad's statement would certainly strengthen the international consensus against Iran.
"It is exactly for this reason that Khamenei, realizing his mistake in promoting Ahmadinejad, placed the pragmatic and experienced Hashemi Rafsanjani above him in order to repair the damage the new, inexperienced but zealot Muslim might cause to the regime," the analyst said.
The analyst was referring to the recent decision by Khamenei to transfer some of his immense and unlimited power to the Assembly of Discerning the Interests of the State (ADIS, or Expediency Council), which is headed by Rafsanjani. According to a new regulation, the ADIS will have the power to supervise the regime's macro-policies and long-term plans and projects, a power that had belonged to the Supreme Leader. This means that all the theocratic regime's three powers - legislative, judicial and executive - must submit their planning and policies to the 32-member, leader-controlled ADIS for approval before implementation.
Until this change, ADIS's main role was to mediate between the Council of the Guardians (CG) and the majlis, or parliament, as the 12-member, leader-controlled CG is in charge of both vetting all candidates in all elections and making sure that laws passed by the majlis are in conformity with Sharia law.
The increased powers given to ADIS were interpreted as a clear warning to Ahmadinejad and the Revolutionary Guards who provided him with millions of votes, against trying to wrest any powers from the clerical establishment.
The warning appears to have fallen on deaf ears, as Ahmadinejad, a former mayor of Tehran, would have been perfectly aware of the reaction - and consequences - of his verbal assault on Israel: if the US needed any further reason to put screws on Iran, Ahmadinejad has provided it. White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Ahmadinejad's opinion "just reconfirms what we have been saying about the regime in Iran. It underscores the concerns we have about Iran's nuclear operations". Playing to the gallery
Addressing a conference in Tehran on Wednesday, entitled "The World Without Zionism", Ahmadinejad said, "To those who doubt, to those who ask is it possible, or those who do not believe, I say accomplishment of a world without America and Israel is both possible and feasible." To a cheering audience that at several points erupted with chants of "death to Israel, death to America, death to England", Ahmadinejad continued, "Once, his eminency Imam [Ruhollah] Khomeini - leader of the 1979 Islamic revolution], stated that the illegal regime of the Pahlavis must go, and it happened. Then he said the Soviet empire would disappear, and it happened. He also said that this evil man Saddam [Hussein] must be punished, and we see that he is under trial in his country. His eminency also said that the occupation regime of Qods [Jerusalem, or Israel] must be wiped off from the map of the world, and with the help of the Almighty, we shall soon experience a world without America and Zionism, notwithstanding those who doubt."
Israel views Iran as its main security threat. Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz has said that Tehran could be capable of developing a nuclear weapon within months, and that there was a need for urgent action to prevent this from happening.
According to Iranian news agencies, including both the official Iranian news agency IRNA and the semi-independent Students News Agency, ISNA, "thousands of members of Islamic associations of schoolchildren, but also representatives of Palestinian combatant groups like Hamas and the Iran-backed Islamic Jihad of Palestine, the Lebanese Hezbollah, members of the Association for the Defense of Palestinian People, senior clerics and officials attended the meeting".
Speaking before Ahmadinejad, Ali Akbari, a personal representative of the Supreme Leader at the Association of Islamic Schoolchildren, and who is also an assistant to the president, stated that "young Iranians are being readied to be the flagbearers of wiping off Israel from the world map".
As he was speaking, the Islamic Jihad of Palestine took responsibility for a suicide attack in the Israeli town of Hadera in which at least five people were killed.
Ahmadinejad has clearly raised the stakes, not only with the international community, but also - and perhaps potentially even more critically - within his own country.
#3
The extreme quietude coming from the WH in recent months I attribute to intense preparations for war.
Essential preparations include laying the diplomatic groundwork, making treaty arrangements, creating endless domestic contingency plans, a hellacious amount of number crunching, and mustering domestic political support. Also, to try and anticipate other hostile powers taking advantage of the war for their own reasons.
Far more discreetly, the WH will probe the Pentagon for "secret weapons" that can end the war quickly, but no ace-in-the-hole weapons that must be preserved at all cost.
They will also try to arrange that Iran show first violence, putting them into the aggressor role, which is very important, and yet to neutralize this aggression when they have declared war. The Napoleonic principal is to allow your enemy no advantage.
At *that* point, only when we are comfortable in defending ourselves and vital targets from harm, does the WH concern itself with the Pentagon strategic and tactical contingencies, and logistics.
This WH, I also imagine, will spend considerable time planning the post-war strategy, too.
I would hope to see Bush make a statement that Iran's declaration was tantamount to a declaration of war against the US and Israel. And then ostentatiously say it was up to Congress to make the appropriate decisions.
Just because you have a war declaration doesn't mean that you have to start shooting, but, it does open up a whole lot of options.
#6
I'd look for Bush to get the foreigners on board publicly before the congress. Then they're in a box. Just like fall 2002. Hey, it's four years later and congressional elections are coming up again.
#7
There's something to be said for throwing the first punch.
Posted by: Captain America ||
10/27/2005 18:43 Comments ||
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#8
"...with the help of the Almighty, we shall soon experience a world without America and Zionism, notwithstanding those who doubt."
Hasn't been much mention of the threat against America in the MSM, just that against Isreal. After all these years of chest thumping and rabid threats, me thinks that the world does not take these lunatics seriously. Reminds me of the mindset prior to 9/11...
I hope that no one forgets that these guys are absolutely convinced that god is on their side. I know it's tempting to make fun of the morons but they can cause some serious damage. I only hope that if they manage to plant nukes in our cities, we have already made clear to muslim governments that there will be serious and lethal consequences to each of their countries. We too can deny that we have any idea how all of their major cities got nuked...
Voicing dismay at remarks attributed to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reportedly calling for Israel to be wiped off the map, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan today said the right of all States in the Middle East to live in peace will now top the agenda of his upcoming visit to Iran.
Hokay. Not to worry. Kofi's on it.
"Under the United Nations Charter, all members have undertaken to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any State," Mr. Annan stressed in a statement issued by his spokesman. "He reminds all Member States that Israel is a long-standing member of the United Nations with the same rights and obligations as every other member," the statement added. "The Secretary-General had already decided to visit Iran during the next few weeks, to discuss other issues. He now intends to place the Middle East peace process, and the right of all States in the area to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force, at the top of his agenda for that visit."
Right. Give 'em a stern talking-to...
Posted by: Fred ||
10/27/2005 13:44 ||
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#1
Useless wanking. Only one way to solve this problem but everyone avoids taking the joint responsibility of doing so.
This is a situation were the outcome is known yet no one will act. UN = useless niggling.
#3
Nothing that a bribe couldn't do to turn Kofi's frown upside down.
Posted by: ed ||
10/27/2005 14:21 Comments ||
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#4
Disagree. This is a necessary, if meaningless and in itself useless, step to smacking Iran. Kofi isn't going to get anything from Ahmadinejad and will have a hard time backing down from what he says here. This makes it easier to get UN sanctions, the next step to the big hit. It would be interesting to know the extent to which Bolton authored the statement.
And if Kofi is headed to the middle east for some jaw jaw, has his itinerary been made public? Al-Q might be interested. One stone could solve lots of problems all at once.
#7
However, if the tables were turned, and it were Israel calling for "wiping Iran off the face of the earth".......
could you imagine the uproar at the UN? I think Kofi would be express something more than "dismay." And he surely would have done it much more immediately, probably calling for an emergency session.
#9
lh - I guess he had to, since even Annan was "dismayed".
Ahmadinejad may actually be doing the entire world a favor. I've long thought that, had they any sense, they would've stayed below the radar, built their suicidal nuke(s) and then, when the pkg was complete and ready to go, start waving their privates at the world.
But there's a bizarre foreign policy playbook in circulation, these days. The MMs, Chavez, ??? - all seem to be following it. Make wild threats and accusations. Repeat until a mantra. Seems self-defeating to me, but perhaps the point is to cow everyone who hasn't the wherewithal to actually stop you into, at least, not supporting those who do. Makes little sense in traditional Western logic -- unless the world MSM can be suborned into playing up the Chicken Little aspect to erode internal support, too. Regardless, it certainly must be a humdinger to the Muzzy Mind. An extension of the image over content philosophy so prevalent, today.
#12
nice timing - Kofi visits during the Israeli preemptive attack
Posted by: Frank G ||
10/27/2005 17:00 Comments ||
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#13
Re .com's remarks -- I've been wondering the same thing about the playbook. If I were building a nuke the last thing I'd do is threaten people what I'm going to do with it once it's built. I seem to recall that there was an obsessive amount of secrecy associated with the Manhatten Project, and as a result the Japanese never knew what was coming. Or something like that.
This is either muzzie performance art, or the Mad Mullahs⢠are trying to keep their own population occupied and not asking the most scary question ("ya know, youze guys are kinda stupid, who put youze in charge?"), or they're trying to buck up their standing with their fellow terr cronies.
I don't get it, but I have a feeling they're going to.
Posted by: Steve White ||
10/27/2005 18:03 Comments ||
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#14
Look at how poorly Saddam played his hand. These guys are great bluffers and bs'ers but when it's time for the rubber to meet the road, they're flat.
The Iranian satellite was joined by others from China and Europe
Iran launched its first satellite into space from Plesetsk in northern Russia on Thursday, joining a select club of countries.
A joint project between Iran and Russia, the Sina-1 satellite will be used to take pictures of Iran and to monitor natural disasters.
It blasted off aboard a Russian Kosmos 3M rocket early on Thursday morning.
The satellite was built for Iran by Polyot, a Russian company based in the Siberian city of Omsk.
Director General of Iran Electronic Industries Ebrahim Mahmoudzadeh said Sina-1 was the result of years of research and 32 months of construction.
Mr Mahmoudzadeh said the $15m research satellite would contain a telecommunications system and cameras that would be used for monitoring Iran's agriculture and natural resources. It could also be deployed after disasters such as earthquakes.
He stressed, however, that the satellite represents only the first step in Iran's space programme.
"Considering that the satellite weights 170kg and is carrying a camera, it is an initial model as far as technical know-how and experience are concerned."
The launch had initially been scheduled for the end of September, but problems with the Iranian satellite forced a delay.
Iran's former defence minister, Admiral Ali Shamkhani, unveiled his country's space programme in 1998.
The launch makes Iran the 43rd country to possess its own satellites.
Sina-1 shared the ride with other satellites from China, Russia and Europe.
#2
Mr Mahmoudzadeh said the $15m research satellite would contain a telecommunications system and cameras that would be used for monitoring Iran's agriculture and natural resources.
Wouldn't it be cheaper for Iran to just buy the pictures from us? LOL Just askin'.
Officials close to President George W. Bush have warned Iran that the current US administration is examining ways to force Tehran to comply with âthe will of the international community regarding its nuclear programâ and giving up its secret nuclear program, uranium enrichment and the production of heavy water in Isfahan and Arak. Asharq al Awsat has learned that the head of a major US oil company, who had previously met with Iranian officials in Geneva, sent an emissary to Tehran last month to hold talks with presidential national security advisor, Ali Larijani.
On a visit to the UN headquarters in September, where he held private meetings with officials close to the US administration, Larjani indicated the Islamic Republicâs desire to communicate directly with Washington, in light of the failure of European mediators (the United Kingdom, France, and Germany) to change the course of US-Iranian relations. In Tehran, the emissary informed Iranian official the Bush administration was currently studying a number of options, including re-opening old cases implicating Iran in terrorist attacks in which US citizens were injured and killed and US institutions destroyed.
An Iranian source revealed, on condition of anonymity, that the report by UN investigator, Detlev Mehlis, into the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, which implicated Syria, had sent shockwaves through the Iranian leadership. Officials in Tehran were greatly worried because of the strategic links with Damascus and because the report mentioned the name of Ahmad Jibril, head of the Popular front for the Liberation of Palestine (general command) who maintains close links to the Iranian security and intelligence services. Iran had been warned that Washington was ready to adopt the same hard-line approach it was following with Damascus, the source reported.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/27/2005 00:00 ||
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Posted by: Rafael ||
10/27/2005 1:14 Comments ||
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The president then said: "And God willing, with the force of God behind it, we shall soon experience a world without the United States and Zionism," according to a quote published by IRNA.
Holy shit. I think that's a green light if I've ever seen one.
Posted by: Rafael ||
10/27/2005 1:16 Comments ||
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#4
Well,
At least he is an honest muslim who lays it out openly about extremist Islam's goals and the means to achieve them.
Only problem is, nobody wants to see the writing on the wall.
when the West wakes up, it will be a very rude awakening.
Posted by: Elder of Zion ||
10/27/2005 7:56 Comments ||
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#5
May I suggest the application of W61, B61, and MK 21 warheads? Alternatively, to reduce the chance of side-effects on India, liberal application of Arc-Light raids would probably do the trick. Repeat as necessary.
U.S. Ambassador Darth VaderJohn Bolton said Wednesday that Syria's leader refused to meet U.N. investigators probing the assassination of Lebanon's former prime minister, but would be required to submit to questioning under a proposed new U.N. resolution. Bolton's comments were the first confirmation that the investigation led by U.N. prosecutor Detlev Mehlis had tried to talk to President Bashar Assad about the Feb. 14 car bomb in Beirut that killed Rafik Hariri and 20 others.
The Syrian president wasn't mentioned in Mehlis' report to the Security Council last week, which implicated top Syrian and Lebanese security officials in Hariri's assassination and accused Syria of not cooperating fully with the investigation. But Mehlis told council members at a closed-door briefing Tuesday that Assad refused to be interviewed, Bolton's spokesman Richard Grenell said. The resolution introduced Tuesday by the United States, France and Britain would require Syria to detain any Syrian official or civilian the U.N. investigators might consider a suspect in Hariri's killing and allow the individual to be questioned outside the country or without Syrian officials present.
It would immediately freeze the assets and impose a travel ban on anyone the commission identified as a possible suspect in the assassination, and if Syria refuses to cooperate, the Security Council would consider "further measures," including economic sanctions. When Bolton was asked whether the detention provision would apply to Assad, he replied: "It absolutely includes the president of Syria. No person is above the law."
Posted by: Fred ||
10/27/2005 00:00 ||
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#1
"You know that I am The Dictator President? See this manly profile? See my prosperous and happy serfs citizens, our shithole democracy? You cannot question me! I am leaving for Switzerland above such things."
- Pencilneck Assad
Posted by: Rafael ||
10/27/2005 0:34 Comments ||
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#3
And again, script failing on CDate function. Sigh.
I wonder, will Russia "defend" Syria against a rain of missiles? How about if the US decides to create, say, a 5 mile no-man's-land along the Iraqi border? Will Puttyputz step up to the plate and commit some sort of military defense?
I think Puttyputz deserves to get reamed - in every way possible, in every orifice. He's a speedbump. Let's make it hurt. Find the ways, and make it hurt to be a global asstard. No doubt his muddled fucked-up half-assed piece of shit "government" has vulnerabilities. There's never going to be anything cooperative or worthy with him in charge. Time to play ratfucker, methinks.
#7
I'm with you in a big way, .com. RasPutin has proved himself to be part of the problem and not the solution. Now is the time to treat him as such. It's almost as if he's French, the way he continues to thwart American interests, especially in the Middle East.
RasPutin's refusal inability to connect the Beslan -> Islamist dots essentially dismisses his status as an international leader. His hard-currencey whoring tunnel vision is, will and shall be his absolute downfall. There are certain profits you don't want to take. Evidently, he is unable to resist the lure of candy-coated poison. Let's hope he eats enough of it before the dentist bills come due.
#8
Condi should make a statement for the Russian media comparing Beslan and Syria and wondering why Putin supports that ideology in one area when it constantly comes back to kill Russians.
It would be interesting to see Putin tap dance the public relations on that one. He'd probably arrest the media again.
#5
It's still worth it. Besides, we will take over the oil within weeks. Afterall, we are crusaders and invaders doing it just for the oil, right?
Posted by: Captain America ||
10/27/2005 2:49 Comments ||
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#6
It might be $150/barrel, but I'd only invade as far as necessary to secure the Gulf and make those barrels OUR barrels. An Iran war should at least be a break-even war.
#7
LOL,
With current oil prices I've already switched to fuelling my car with Balvaneys 15 years old Double Casket single malt whiskey. Comes very handy when you get thirsty on the road :)
Posted by: Elder of Zion ||
10/27/2005 8:39 Comments ||
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#8
It won't be long before oil dependency drops significantly. We're on the cusp of a whole lot of commercial breakthroughs in info tech that will reduce the number of miles people drive to offices for employment, among other factors. It won't happen overnight, but it will happen and it will undercut the oil producing economies dramatically.
October 27, 2005: Thereâs an interesting pattern developing in Moslem media, especially the satellite news networks like al Jazeera; they are featuring more stories about Islamic terrorist attacks killing innocent Moslem civilians. Moslem journalists have an interesting, largely symbiotic, relationship with Islamic terrorists. They need each other. The terrorists need the favorable exposure in order to encourage people to join (especially for suicide missions), give money and provide support for actual operations (a place to hide, information). Islamic terrorists tend to be popular with Moslem audiences, especially when they are killing non-Moslems. Thus Moslem journalists do well when they feature stories of Islamic terrorists.
Arabs in particular, and Moslems in general, have adopted an attitude of victimhood, and tend to blame most of their problems on others, especially Westerners (although occasionally they will use other, usually nearby, but different from them, Moslems). Thus the enormous popularity, among Moslems, of the 911 attacks, and other terrorist operations that kill lots of infidels (non-Moslems). But the hero turns to zero when the victims are Moslems, especially if they are of the same ethnicity or nationality as the journalists. As a result, Iraqi journalists quickly turned against al Qaeda when more and more victims of Islamic terrorism were Iraqis. The same thing happened in Egypt during the 1990s, when the Moslem Brotherhood attacks began killing Egyptians, rather than infidel foreigners. There was an identical pattern in Algeria. However, there are exceptions. The Moslem media was less eager to condemn the killing of Sudanese Moslems by other Sudanese Moslems because the killers were Arab, while the victims were black African Sudanese Moslems. Arabs donât like to admit it (although it often pops up in news stories), but they have long had a deep disdain for black Africans.
Thus is was a big deal for al Jazeera to give coverage of al Qaeda terrorists killing Iraqis. That coverage has been growing. At first it was accompanied by forceful arguments about how it was unavoidable, and it was somehow all the fault of the foreign soldiers in Iraq. Over the past year, the attacks on Moslem civilians kept getting worse and worse, including the slaughter of dozens of children. Perhaps al Jazeera editors started paying more attention to the Iraqi media (which really has it in for al Qaeda.) Whatever the case, the Moslem media is less and less willing to be an apologist for al Qaeda, at least when it comes to killing Moslem civilians. Al Qaeda still gets favorable coverage when they kill infidels, but the murder of Moslems can no longer be ignored.
This has not changed the tendency of Moslems to blame outsiders for their internal problems, but it has caused many to consider more carefully what harm Islamic terrorists can do. Attitudes are changing, as witness discussions between al Qaeda leaders about the damage done by attacks that kill Moslem civilians. Even these guys have noticed how they are slipping in the ratings. If they donât get their numbers up, their audience will wander away, and Islamic terrorism will become much less of an international problem.
Posted by: Steve ||
10/27/2005 09:37 ||
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#1
All will be forgiven after the next attack on non-muslim tourists or train riders.
Posted by: ed ||
10/27/2005 10:37 Comments ||
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A partisan fight in a Senate committee appears to have doomed new federal incentives to increase the nation's oil-refining capacity, at least for this year.
The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee deadlocked 9-9 over a Republican proposal to streamline federal and state permit procedures for companies that want to build refineries or expand plants.
Committee Chairman James Inhofe (R., Okla.) pushed the plan as a compromise over a House-passed proposal that weakened environmental standards and gave oil companies insurance against permit delays. Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R., R.I.), however, voted with the panel's eight Democrats to reject the measure.
"We should be addressing our consumption, not just demand," Sen. Chafee said, adding that he wanted to see tighter federal fuel-economy standards for U.S. cars and trucks.
Democrats claimed that Republicans were giving incentives to oil companies, whose profits have climbed amid recent price increases. "We ought not to feed that greed," said Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg (D., N.J.).
Oil-industry officials, who said increased refining capacity is needed to reduce reliance on imported gasoline and to give the nation's supply system more flexibility to handle emergencies such as the recent hurricane outages, were disappointed.
"The process isn't over yet, and perhaps something will rise from the ashes," said Robert Slaughter, president of the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association.
But there is, as yet, no Senate sponsor for the House version of the measure and little time left this year to try another Senate version.
Meanwhile, Democrats see political opportunities in recent announcements of high oil-company profits during the third quarter.
By enforcing party-line votes on energy issues and drawing support from Republican moderates, such as Sen. Chafee, Democrats hope to gain a slim majority for their approach, which relies heavily on conservation and environmentally acceptable "alternative" fuels, such as ethanol and oil produced from coal. Sen. Hillary Clinton (D., N.Y.) recently proposed a $20 billion "Strategic Energy Fund" that would tax the profits of oil companies that didn't invest in new U.S. refining capacity or in production of alternative fuels.
The Energy Department reported that gasoline prices have fallen below prehurricane levels, partly because of a "record volume" of imported gasoline from Europe.
But officials noted that the price of diesel oil remains above $3.10 a gallon because imports of diesel are relatively small and demand for the fuel remains high, driven by the need for home heating oil -- which is a similar product -- and farmers' need for the fuel to harvest crops.
#2
"We ought not to feed that greed, " said
Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg (D., N.J.).
an expert on the subject.
Posted by: Red Dog ||
10/27/2005 12:34 Comments ||
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#3
Danielle, the alternative fuels everyone talks about (hydrogen, ethanol) are generally a scam; they're dependent on conventional hydrocarbons for their manufacture.
Everyone's using the fact that profits are good for the majors as an _excuse_ to keep from doing anything to shore up oil production in _this_ country.
Hillary and her strict party-line discipline (and the rest of her party) helped _create_ the higher oil prices that she's complaining about, which is to me the height of hypocricy.
Posted by: Phil ||
10/27/2005 12:47 Comments ||
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#4
A refinery (or, to take another oil-field example, the Mars Project) takes a decade or more to pay off. The government is more than welcome to complain about high profits one year as soon as they're willing to make up the shortfall during the bad years.
(Three years after the bottom fell out of the oilfield in the US in '85 and just about everyone lost their jobs, they revoked the windfall profits tax. I guess they were worried someone was going to request a refund on their negative profits.)
Posted by: Phil ||
10/27/2005 12:49 Comments ||
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#5
BTW, in case y'all were wondering, the rumor going around the grapevine is that it's going to take about a year to get the Mars Project (a deepwater project way out in the Gulf) about a year to get repaired from the damage from Katrina.
Posted by: Phil ||
10/27/2005 14:48 Comments ||
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Al-Salafiyah al-Jihadiyah in Morocco issued a statement yesterday, October 25, 2005, declaring that the time has come to announce the âjihad on the government of disbelieving and oppression,â for the heads of government have allegedly âsold the country to the infidels after they cleared the area from the real Muslims who care about the religion.â The group claims that even before the âhappeningsâ on May 16, referring to the bombings in Casablanca on May 16, 2003, the Moroccan government had arrested Muslims âwho like jihadâ and knowledgeable scholars on the subject. The bombings then exacerbated the alleged government policy, as they are charged with arresting all Sunni Muslim people.
The group asks for the support of Muslims and calls upon all Moroccan mujahideen to concentrate on jihad in Morocco. Further, they state that though they support al-Qaeda, they prefer to go âin our way of jihadâ. Al-Salafiyah al-Jihadiyah, believed to be founded in early 1990s Mohamed Fizazi, a leader of the Salafist movement in Morocco, and alleged to be led by Mohamed Abdelouahab Rafiki, AKA Abu Hafs, is a banned terrorist group in Morocco believed to be responsible for a number of criminal acts throughout the country.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
10/27/2005 02:59 ||
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#1
Full text of press release: Kill! Kill! Kill! Ullullu! Dirkha! Dirkha! Dirkha!
Posted by: ed ||
10/27/2005 9:01 Comments ||
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#3
I think what we really need is to organize some Shiite clerics issue a Fatwa(TM) against Abu Hafs and let the sides bleed each other to death.
Can we import a few Shiites into Morroco ?
Posted by: Elder of Zion ||
10/27/2005 9:18 Comments ||
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LAHORE: The Punjab police on Wednesday requested the Home Department to set up a joint investigation team (JIT) to probe the October 7 attack on an Ahmedi worship place in Mandi Bahauddin. The team, which would include officers from the Punjab Police, the Intelligence Bureau (IB) and Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), would be tasked with hunting down the four gunmen that opened fire on a congregation of Ahmedis in the Moong village, near Mandi Bahauddin, killing eight and injuring 19 people, including children and elderly people.
In a letter to all district police officers (DPOs), Inspector General of Police Ziaul Hassan admitted that the attack indicated that some aspects of the policeâs security arrangements were still weak. In the letter, the IG had drawn the DPOsâ attention to a circular issued on September 23, detailing security measures for worship places in particular. The IG directed all Deputy Inspector Generals and DPOs to ensure foolproof security arrangements to prevent such incidents in the future.
In the wake of the killings, the Punjab government had put all law-enforcement agencies on high alert. Home Department officials said that the Punjab government was committed to providing security and protection to all its citizens. Police arrested 20 activists from different sectarian groups after the attack and according to a news item, two special investigation teams, one each from the from Federal Investigation Authority (FIA) and the Islamabad IB, reached Mandi Bahauddin to investigate the attack. Gujranwala DPO Zafar Abbas Luk said that he suspected the involvement of foreign elements in the Mong killing. According to the instructions, places of worship, including mosques, imambargahs and churches etc would be categorised into two categories, depending on the sensitivity of the worship place.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/27/2005 00:00 ||
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#1
"killing eight and injuring 19"
Massacre? *snort* Why that's silly - that's just a little Islamic sectarian haggling, methinks.
#2
But remember, Ahmedis are defined as non-Moose limbs. They can't call their places of worship mosques, can't go to Mecca, and can't sign up for jihad.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/27/2005 12:52 Comments ||
Top||
#3
Interesting group the Ahmedi or Ahmadiyah. According to the Britannica, the Ahmadiyah is one of the more popular Sufi orders in Egypt and the three yearly festival in honor of the groups founder are major celebrations there.
The sect was founded in by a guy, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, in Qadian India. He had the temerity to call himself a PROPHET of Islam (which is a big no-no as mohammed was supposed to be the last one). He claimed to be the mahdi, the christian messiah, an incarnation of Krishna and a reappearance of mohammed (I guess that this was his attempt to not be accused of claiming to be a prophet who followed mohammed, since he was him) reminds me of that persian guy who started the bahia sect. They believe that Jihad must be done by peaceful means...
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
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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.
Yemen Times Staff: 
Members of Kuwait's Northern Borders Department on Wednesday seized a truck attempting to smuggle 288 kilograms of cannabis into Kuwait from Iraq. In a press release, the Interior Ministry said border security received information that a truck arriving from Iraq will attempt to smuggle a large quantity of drugs into Kuwait. The information led to forming a specialized team that managed to capture the truck with its Egyptian driver.
Belgrade, 27 Oct. (AKI) - Former Kosovo prime minister 
AMSTERDAM - Tackling Islamic extremism âwhere it turns upâ must be a key plank of The Netherlandsâ fight against terrorism, Dutch Justice Minister Pier Hein Donner told an anti-terrorism conference here on Wednesday, one year after the murder of filmmaker Theo van Gogh. âRadicalisation must be confronted where it turns up,â Donner said. âAll the legal measures, regulations and checks that we are introducing can fight terrorism, but they will never be enough to eradicate radicalism and its violent expression.â
France's interior minister presented a long-awaited anti-terrorism bill to Cabinet on Wednesday, rejecting allegations that it would trample on civil liberties. The bill would stiffen prison sentences for convicted terrorists, allow police to monitor citizens who travel to countries known for terror training camps, and broaden the use of surveillance cameras. Interior Minister 
Three Sunni Arab groups joined forces Wednesday to field candidates in December's elections provided for under the newly ratified constitution which many Sunnis opposed. But a group of hard-line Sunni clerics denounced the constitution and said they will not join the political process. Those contradictory statements signaled confusion within the minority Sunni Arab community, which forms the core of the insurgency, over how to go forward after it failed to block ratification of the new constitution in the Oct. 15 referendum.
Iraq's top Shiite cleric has decided to withhold his endorsement of a Shiite coalition that swept last January's general election, rejecting repeated pleas by senior politicians for him to reconsider, associates on both sides said Wednesday. The move by the Iranian-born Grand Ayatollah 
BAGHDAD: Iraqi Sunni leaders said on Wednesday they would focus on pressing US forces to pull out after failing to block a controversial constitution, hoping a US death toll of 2,000 will encourage Washington to withdraw. âOur political programme will focus more on getting the Americans out of Iraq,â 
Officials close to President George W. Bush have warned Iran that the current US administration is examining ways to force Tehran to comply with âthe will of the international community regarding its nuclear programâ and giving up its secret nuclear program, uranium enrichment and the production of heavy water in Isfahan and Arak. Asharq al Awsat has learned that the head of a major US oil company, who had previously met with Iranian officials in Geneva, sent an emissary to Tehran last month to hold talks with presidential national security advisor, 
U.S. Ambassador 
LAHORE: The Punjab police on Wednesday requested the Home Department to set up a joint investigation team (JIT) to probe the October 7 attack on an Ahmedi worship place in Mandi Bahauddin. The team, which would include officers from the Punjab Police, the Intelligence Bureau (IB) and Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), would be tasked with hunting down the four gunmen that opened fire on a congregation of Ahmedis in the Moong village, near Mandi Bahauddin, killing eight and injuring 19 people, including children and elderly people.
