Rebel groups in Chad have denied allegations that they are receiving support from neighbouring Sudan. The United Front for Change, a loose grouping of eight rebel groups, has released a statement denying Chadian Government claims that it is being funded by neighbouring Sudan. The statement says that the movement is part of a popular uprising against the Government and is independent of all overseas countries.
The rebels are trying to overthrow Chad's President Idriss Deby, who says they are getting arms and money from the Sudanese Government. Sudan has denied the claim but Chad has cut all diplomatic ties with its neighbour and is threatening to evict Sudanese refugees. The rebels now accuse the Chadian Government of recruiting European mercenaries to stay in power.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/17/2006 00:00 ||
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"Hello, Iblis? This is Romania calling. We'd like our flag back."
In this instance they're only caught figuratively...
Humanitarian groups say the fate of 200,000 refugees was hanging in the balance because of the escalating crisis between Chad and Sudan. But they doubted Chadian President Idriss Deby Itno would expel them from his country. Mr Deby threatened to close camps housing refugees from Sudan's conflict-ridden Darfur region after rebels, whom he says are backed by the neighbouring regime, attacked the Chadian capital N'Djamena on Thursday.
A representative for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees said she was "very worried" about the plight of the refugees who have been living in eastern Chad for three years. "The refugees have already suffered enough in Darfur. We do not want them to become victims of the tension between the two countries," Ana Liria-Franch said. She said rebels have begun entering the camps to recruit fighters.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/17/2006 00:00 ||
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#1
Nice jacket. He looks like the first black reporter at everybody's local TV station back in the 70's.
#3
Spanning the globe to bring you the constant variety of war
the thrill of victory
and the agony of defeat
the human drama of armed competition
this is ABC's Wide World of Sports
The President of Sudan has denied supporting rebels who are trying to topple the President in neighbouring Chad. Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir says Sudan has no interest in political instability in Chad. He says Sudan remains committed to a deal brokered earlier this year to ease tension along the border between the two countries.
Chad accuses Sudan of backing rebels, who are based in Sudan's western region of Darfur and are trying to overthrow President Idriss Deby. They attacked the Chadian capital last week. President Deby has accused Sudan of genocide in its western region of Darfur and has branded its president a traitor.
But Sudan says Chad has failed to respect the border peace deal by refusing to attend a committee charged with its implementation. Chad has withdrawn from the African Union-brokered peace talks on Sudan's troubled Darfur region It has also announced it is closing its border with Sudan. Mr Deby has threatened to expel 200,000 refugees from Darfur, now living in Chad, in retaliation for a rebel offensive last Thursday.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/17/2006 00:00 ||
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Egyptian Public Prosecution said on Sunday that a person held on charges of attacking three churches in Alexandria had committed the crime alone. The prosecution said in a statement that Mamoud Salah Abdulrazzaq who was recognized by witnesses, committed the crime alone and used two knives in the assault. It added that 26 witnesses were questioned and that it would ask the security guards of the churches to give their testimony later.Meanwhile, a second Egyptian citizen died earlier today of injuries he sustained in yesterday's violence in the city of Alexandria.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/17/2006 00:00 ||
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#1
Just one? I thought they caught four yesterday -- one at each church being attacked.
An Italian Catholic magazine has published a satirical cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad (may his drip clear up peace be upon him) cut in half and burning in hell, triggering protests from the countrys Muslim leaders, daily La Repubblica reported yesterday. The chief editor of Studi Cattolici, Cesare Cavalleri, says the cartoon is inspired by 13th century Italian poet Dante Alighieri, who places Prophet Muhammad in hell for bringing divisions to the world in his famous book, the Divine Comedy. But Muslim leaders say the cartoon is blasphemous, unfunny and dangerous.
What'd you think they were gonna say? "That's a real thigh slapper"?
In remarks published by La Repubblica, Mario Scialoja of the Italian chapter of the Muslim World League criticized the cartoons extreme bad taste while another Muslim leader called it a provocation.
"And if you provoke us in the least little way, you know what's gonna happen!"
Cavalleri, a member of the influential Catholic movement Opus Dei, says the cartoon was not meant to offend Muslims.
You knew damned well it would. Admit it. You may as well have a little fun at their expense before they boom your cars.
In another cartoon published in the same March edition of Studi Cattolici, Italy is also mocked over its alleged failure to properly tackle the Muslim problem. Asked if he was concerned that the cartoons might trigger a terrorist attack in Italy, Cavalleri said: If the drawings were to produce an attack, it would only confirm the idiotic positions of Islamic extremists.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/17/2006 00:00 ||
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#1
If you are looking for trouble and you want to help extremists, this is the way to do it, said Hamza Piccardo of the Union of Islamic Communities and Organizations in Italy.
Better to knuckle under and do what your told...INFIDEL!
Posted by: ed ||
04/17/2006 9:08 Comments ||
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#3
What's going to happen to 60 Minutes. Andy Rooney yesterday had a Koran squezzed between books, and the Bible was on top.Is'nt this bad? Kinda like a cartoon?
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the weekend stepped up the war of words between his Islamist-rooted government and the countrys secular president, saying Muslims had a place in politics. Religious people also have a right to practice politics . . . you cannot stop them from doing so, he told a gathering in Istanbul on Saturday. If you want to keep the faithful out of politics, the people will never forgive you, he added.
President Ahmet Necdet Sezer on Wedneday warned that Turkey faced a mounting risk from Islamic fundamentalists bent on undermining the secular administration. Turkeys only guarantee against this threat is its secular order. Religious fundamentalism is trying to infiltrate politics, education and the state, he said.
The remarks drew fire from the government, with Deputy Prime Minister Mehmet Ali Sahin chastising the president for tackling the subject in public without consulting the government. It is the duty of us all to develop democracy in Turkey and meticulously defend the principle of secularism without making religious people uneasy, he said.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/17/2006 00:00 ||
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#1
No matter what you do you will make those that would have religion control the political system and government upset. It's not just a problem of one particular religion. islam is just the most whining and snivelling of them currently. It's not just confined to Turkey.
Posted by: SPoD ||
04/17/2006 1:35 Comments ||
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Health officials in Manitoba are being accused of not acting quickly enough to stop a tuberculosis outbreak in northern Manitoba First Nations [native] communities.
At least 19 people have been diagnosed in and around the Garden Hill reserve [reservation], about 600 kilometres north of Winnipeg.
...[a member of Parliament said]"There has not been a co-ordinated response to this outbreak and it has become critical."
#1
If they can't handle a little TB outbreak in an isolated area, what are they going to do if the Bird Flu goes pandemic? I suspect, though, that the situation is not nearly so exciting as the politicians are making out.
This does compare rather ironically to the current mumps outbreak spreading from Iowa and Nebraska by college kids flying about the countryside on Spring Break... completely ignoring the two week, symptom free, incubation period. I haven't been paying attention though: was there perhaps a mandatory inoculation of the student bodies in the affected schools?
#2
Meanwhile, in other news France is offerring to pay illegals to go back to their nations of origin, reportedly equiv. of US$2400 per adult and US$600-800 per minor child. NOT WORKING THOUGH, so Paris wants to modify the prog so that it'll be easier for illegals to participate.
Pressure is growing on US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, with more retired generals calling for him to resign over the Iraq war. The White House has said it is happy with the way Mr Rumsfeld is handling his job and the situation in Iraq.
But the backing comes as the number of retired generals calling for him to be replaced has risen to six.
It is being described as a rebellion led by those who know Mr Rumsfeld's handling of the war from the inside.
The two most recent retired generals to voice their unease about Mr Rumsfeld's handling of the war are Maj Gen John Riggs and Maj Gen Charles H Swannack Jr, both of the Army.
#1
Watch the MSM promote the number like they do the casualty figures in Iraq. Since Iraq has quieted down, I guess this is the next MSM push to run America. Six huh? Just how many retired generals are there? Somehow MSM has to portray these guys as 'victims' to qualify as special status for 'moral authority' to trump thousands.
Posted by: ed ||
04/17/2006 12:21 Comments ||
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#3
All these retired generals say there were terrible mistakes made, and that Sec. Rumsfeld didn't listen to them. I haven't heard word ONE about what was done wrong, what their "better ideas" might have been, or how they recommended doing things differently. I think the whole thing is retaliation for Rumsfeld's reorganization and the downgrading of the importance of general officers (combat brigade-size units instead of divisions, more special forces, etc.). Until I see something I can evaluate and judge, I won't believe the words of these six whining a$$holes.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
04/17/2006 12:28 Comments ||
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#6
It would be dangerous for the military community, retired or not, to be given the authority to 'dictate' to its civilian bosses (step one on the way to military coup mentality.)
The actual 'issues' - things like 'too small an invading/occupying force', 'should not have disbanded Iraqi army' etc. are FAR from having been clear mistakes. The assumption is generally that the outcome of the path not taken would have been the 'right' path, but there are trade-offs everywhere, and that path would more likely have been even more wrong. But we'll NEVER KNOW, so it is the easy political thing to argue.
From what I can gather, the real grievance with Sec. Rumsfeld is his 'style' - it is not an uncommon executive style, and it often works, but it definitely makes a lot of people uncomfortable. That style confronts, challenges, and belittles, and its practitioner can seem like a real a**, but it is pretty efficient at forcing people to be prepared, to know their stuff, and to be able and willing to defend themselves. Generals may not be used to being treated like grunts in Basic.
#7
RR, do you have a habit of putting words into other people's mouths or do you just speak out of your ass?
Posted by: ed ||
04/17/2006 13:06 Comments ||
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#8
I find it very interesting that these Generals all come out at relatively the same time.
Many said the Rumsfeld "micro" managed his generals. That rich. If I had a dollar for everytime a general micromanaged commanders or staff, I would own the Army. Its the same for going in front of him not prepared. Rummie would rip generals apart for not being informed and prepared on their briefing topic. What a big surprise! Almost all generals are like that as well.
#9
OldPatriot, glad you pointed this out. It's been bothering me since the outset (long before this current silly MSM/Beltway jihad against Rummy) - just what - EXACTLY - were the mistakes, and EXACTLY what was the alternative visible at the time and EXACTLY what would have been its likely consequences, to include risks and trade-offs.
So today I had a chance to pose this question - in condensed form - to a correspondent for a major news outfit here. First, confusion - he of course seized on "more troops!", but appeared to think that (widely and enthusiastically echoed but empty mantra) so-called "criticism" was most meaningful in relation to the 3-week kinetic war in 2003. Next, when I reminded him the US succeeded so fast in 2003 at such a low cost that we had trouble staying out of our own way, he had nothing to say. This stuff is literally empty sloganeering, unexamined in any respect. One substantive query, and poof - nothing there at all. He and his colleagues smiled and agreed when I playfully suggested that, oh, just maybe, some reporter could grill a Rummy critic next time one popped up.
#10
Ed: do you have a habit of putting words into other people's mouths or do you just speak out of your ass?
So why did you bring it up?
Verlaine: when I reminded him the US succeeded so fast in 2003 at such a low cost
That's an odd definition of success you have there. And a nice strawman. No one's arguing about how well Iraq was taken. It's what came after that's the sticking point.
'Rumsfeld also has said he relied on what his commanders in the field told him.
"I think the secretary's comments are disingenuous," Batiste told Early Show co-anchor Harry Smith. "I think he built that plan the way he wanted to, without regard to the Centcom work for ten years to build a deliberate plan."
Gen. Eric Shinseki, then the Army chief of staff, told Congress a month before the 2003 invasion of Iraq that occupying the country could require "several hundred thousand troops," rather than the smaller force that was later provided.
"And we all remember what happened to him," said Batiste. "He was retired early, and the Secretary of Defense did not go to his retirement ceremony." '
The number of troops. Not to break the Iraqi army, but to keep order afterwards. Which Rummy claimed was kept. "thats just one guy with a vase, that the media keep showing again and again" remember that? "This is democracy, and democracy is messy" Remember that? At a time when Iraq was falling into the disorder that would make rebuilding, and defeating the insurgency so difficult. Such arrogance. Such irresponsibility.
#12
LH - ever hear of Shay's rebellion? Ever hear of something like the American Civil War. Yep, democracy can certainly be messy.
Oh, by the way, how long between the surrender of Germany and Japan with relatively docile populations did it take for the first democratically elected government to take its seat? How long before they were able to field a defense force of significant size? And I am just trying to remember how both were subject to hostile neighbors supplying both volunteers and munitions to keep it all stable.
Tell me the name of an American [or otherwise] general officer who ever said - 'No, thank you, I already have enough troops, equipment and material to do the job?'
#13
I read General Tommy Franks' book. Nowhere in there does he say Rumsfield denied him anything he asked for. The Turks screwed us on the 4th Infantry Division deployment. We had considerably less transport and logistics capability than in the war to free Kuwait. It's a careful balance of how many troops you need, how many you REALLY need, and how to get them the bullets and beans. It really sounds to me thses guys don't like Rumsfield because he didn't treat them as they felt Generals should be treated, he has redifined the major combat unit down from the Division to the Brigade (let's face it, after the initial invasion division sized operations are unweildy) and they don't like the loss of power. Cry me a river.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
04/17/2006 14:54 Comments ||
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#14
Thank you for that report, Verlaine. I wish I could've been there to see their faces when you posed that little question.
#15
The alternative COAs ("plans") would all be part of JOPES, either as part of the deliberate planning process or part of Crisis Action Planning and would all be classified. Anyone who has been through phase one of JPME should know that. Phase one is supposed to be taught at all of the service staff colleges.
I was taught that once you are retired or have resigned, you could spout off all you want politically. Eisenhower could not have run for president otherwise. When you are wearing the uniform, there are tremendous restrictions on what you can say. While you can accuse the retired generals of poor judgment or lousy politics, you cannot accuse then of breaking any laws.
The lead editorial in Army magazine (no link) this month was a Rumsfeld basher. Army is not an official publication of the Army, but rather the voice of the Association of the US Army. I can guarantee you that it would not have been published if Gordon Sullivan and Barry McCaffery and their boys had not bought off on it. I don't know the overall number of anti-Rumsfeld officers, but it's more than six.
#16
How many of these General's are former Clinton stooges that needed to be replaced in any case? This being an election year, should there be any surprise that partisan ex-General's would attack this administration and the SECDEF on an issue where the Admin gets it's strongest support? GWOT.
#17
Force size was obviously suficient for taking Iraq. I don't know about security afterward though. Can't hardly expect Rummy to have a crystal ball. Nation building is far from an exact science.
Posted by: Mike N. ||
04/17/2006 16:06 Comments ||
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#18
"Force size was obviously suficient for taking Iraq. I don't know about security afterward though. Can't hardly expect Rummy to have a crystal ball. Nation building is far from an exact science"
No its not. Thats why shinseki took a swag at it. He took the number of troops needed to keep order (just barely) in Kosovo, and multiplied by the ratio of the population of Iraq to the population of Kosovo. He got undercut for that - they named his successor a year before his terms was up. So the issue is not giving the commanders everything they wanted, its giving them an amount based on a sound plan.
Democracy IS messy. But what was happening in Baghdad in late spring and summer of '03 wasnt the inevitable messiness of democracy. It was a collapse of order.
Yup, this was a hard place to keep secure, as compared with Germany and Japan. But that was predicted before the war, and why more troops were called for.
And no, from what ive heard most of these generals are not Democrats - well Wesley Clark IS, and id dismiss his complaints right off. Hell Id dismiss Zinnis complaints right off. Its the guys who had combat commands in Iraq that im listening to.
Franks - does he explain why he didnt ask for more troops for the OCCUPATION? I agree, that Franks is getting to get dragged into this, and what he says will matter.
#19
Right again LH. Franks words will have a lot of power when he weighs in.
As for occupation force size, I agree with the critics. I admit that I don't actually know anything about it, but the numbers seemed miserly to me. I read the book Cobra II and it does look like he did not concern himself sufficiently or at least dismissed some solid advice on this matter.
Posted by: Mike N. ||
04/17/2006 17:34 Comments ||
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#20
Part of the mess after the fall of Saddam was the stupid state department crying all the way to the white house not to let the "Hand of occupation" weigh heavily on the Iraqis. So, looters and the beginning of the insurgancy were allowed to grow without restraint.
The state department and the civies and the pentagon once again screwed up everything by surrendering halfway through the attack on Fallujah (which was going very, very well) when the MSM and the terrorist propegandists turned up the media heat.
Both of those led directly to the mess that we are cleaning up today. It will take longer with more blood and treasure than it would if we had just OCCUPIED and enforced the law in the first place and then stomped a mudhole in some terrorist ass.
The civilian leadership at the State department is the primary failure of this whole thing. Rummie's is listening to them.
#24
The whining of these generals is sickening, my god any general in history that fought a war would love to have the casualty rate the U.S. has now. Was it not at Parkersburg were 3000 men died in 10 minutes and the attack was considered a success. I don't like losing soldiers either, but the rates are low considering what could have been.
JERUSALEM (AP) - Israel has proposed freeing a leader of the Palestinian uprising if the United States releases Jonathan Pollard, the former Pentagon analyst and current traitor convicted of spying for the Jewish state, Army Radio reported Sunday.
The report said Israel would free Marwan Barghouti, who is serving five life sentences for masterminding deadly attacks, in return for Pollard. Pollard is serving a life sentence in a federal prison for selling military secrets to Israel in the 1980s.
Reeeeeally? What do we get out of this? We release a traitor, Israel hands back a killer to the Paleos, and we get ...
The report said the deal has been proposed by officials in Israel's Foreign Ministry. The ministry declined comment, and U.S. Embassy spokesman Stewart Tuttle called the report ``ridiculous speculation.'' ``As far as I know, it has no basis in reality,'' Tuttle said.
Army Radio quoted Israeli security officials as saying that the release of Barghouti, a leading figure in Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah Party, could help Fatah wrest power back from the Islamic militant group Hamas and restore stability on the Palestinian street.
And stability on the Paleo street is so important to ... to ... someone ...
Pollard was working as a civilian naval analyst for the Pentagon when he was arrested in 1985, and pleaded guilty. His case remains a sticking point in U.S.-Israel relations, and Israel has repeatedly lobbied American presidents for his pardon. Since Pollard's sentencing, Israel has granted him citizenship.
And when he's dead, they can have him.
Last month's election of Pollard's former handler, Rafi Eitan, to the Israeli parliament has drawn new attention to his plight. Eitan has said he would like to see Pollard go free, while defending the original espionage operation.
As long as you defend it, we're keeping him.
Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court which declined to give Pollard access to records that could bolster his case for presidential clemency. In January, Israel's Supreme Court refused to grant Pollard the title of Prisoner of Zion, which would required the government to do all it can to get him released. The status was originally created for Jewish activists imprisoned in the Soviet Union in the 1970s and '80s.
Guess someone wised up to the difference ...
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/17/2006 00:00 ||
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#1
Sorry NFW.
Posted by: SPoD ||
04/17/2006 1:00 Comments ||
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#2
Israel could be looking for an excuse to release Marwan Barghouti, who will be a long term head ache in jail. Probably out of jail too.
Sources close to Jonathan Pollard - the Israeli agent imprisoned in the United States - warned on Friday that if Gil Pensioners' Party Chairman Rafi Eitan would be appointed a minister in Interim Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's government, Pollard would release classified information that could be harmful to Israel.
They claimed that the information would be detrimental to every former Israeli prime minister, including senior Kadima MK Shimon Peres, Channel 2 reported.
Pollard is serving a life sentence after being charged with selling American state secrets to Israel. His operator was Rafi Eitan who served in the Mossad at the time.
Pollard said, "In my worst nightmares I never imagined that my people wouldn't care about the mitzvah of rescuing prisoners to such an extent that they would bring to power my former commander - the man who betrayed me and abandoned me for 21 years,"
WORD: If you SPY against your own country and then get caught, don't Whine about it later asshole because you made the choice, no one forced you. Pollard is lucky to still be breathing.
#10
Pollard is lucky he is still alive. He should have been shot, but then they made a movie (Falcon and Snowman) about the stupid kids who stole a billion dollars with of technology and sold it to the Russians in Mexico City for $10,000. They should have been buried alive with scarab beetles.
#12
http://www.abrooke.com/pollard/sentences.htm
The following tables indicate how grossly disproportionate Pollard's life sentence is when compared to the sentences of others who spied for allied nations.
Pollard's life sentence is also disproportionate even when compared to the sentences of those who committed far more serious offences by spying for enemy nations.
Table I: American Allies
Jonathan Pollard is the only person in the history of the United States to receive a life sentence for spying for an American ally.
On November 21, 2005, Pollard entered the 21th year of his life sentence, with no end in sight.
The maximum sentence today for such an offence is 10 years.
The median sentence for this offence is 2 to 4 years.
Name Country Spied For Sentence/Punishment Time Served
Before Release*
Jonathan Pollard Israel Life imprisonment
Michael Schwartz Saudi Arabia Discharged from Navy No time served.
Peter Lee China 1 year in halfway house No jail time.
Samuel Morison Great Britain 2 years 3 months
Phillip Selden El Salvador 2 years
Steven Baba South Africa 8 years; reduced to 2 years 5 months
Sharon Scranage Ghana 5 years; reduced to 2 years 8 months
Jean Baynes Phillipines 41 months 15 months
Abdul Kader Helmy Egypt 4 years 2 years
Geneva Jones Liberia 37 months
Frederick Hamilton Ecuador 37 months
Joseph Brown Phillipines 6 years
Michael Allen Phillipines 8 years
Robert Kim South Korea 9 years 7 years
Thomas Dolce South Africa 10 years 5.2 years
Steven Lalas Greece 14 years
* Time served before release is shown where known. Other cases of early release exist.
Table II: American Enemies
Jonathan Pollard spied for an American ally. This chart shows that Pollard's life sentence is far harsher than most of the sentences received by those who spied for enemies, and thereby committed much more serious offences and treason.
Name Country Spied For Sentence Time Served
Before Release*
James Wood Soviet Union 2 years
Sahag Dedyan Soviet Union 3 years
Randy Jeffries Soviet Union 3-9 years
Amarylis Santos Cuba 3½ years
Joseph Santos Cuba 4 years
Mariano Faget Cuba 5 years
Brian Horton Soviet Union 6 years
Alejandro Alonso Cuba 7 years
William Bell Poland 8 years
Alfred Zoho East Germany 8 years
Nikolay Ogarodnikova Soviet Union 8 years
Francis X. Pizzo Soviet Union 10 years
Daniel Richardson Soviet Union 10 years
Ernst Forbich East Germany 15 years
William Whalen Soviet Union 15 years
Edwin Moore Soviet Union 15 years
Troung Dinh Ung North Vietnam 15 years
Ronald Humphrey North Vietnam 15 years
Kurt Alan Stand East Germany 17½ years
Robert Lipka Soviet Union 18 years
David Barnett Soviet Union 18 years
Svetlana Ogarodnikova Soviet Union 18 years
Albert Sombolay Iraq & Jordan 19 years
Richard Miller Soviet Union 20 years 6 years
Theresa Maria Squillacote East Germany 21.8 years
Sarkis Paskallan Soviet Union 22 years
Harold Nicholson Soviet Union 23 years
David Boone Soviet Union 24 years
Ana Belen Montes Cuba 25 years
Clayton Lonetree Soviet Union 25 years 9 years
Michael Walker Soviet Union 25 years 15 years
Bruce Ott Soviet Union 25 years
Kelly Warren Hungary &
Czechoslovakia 25 years
Earl Pitts Soviet Union 27 years
H.W. Boachanhaupi Soviet Union 30 years
Roderick Ramsay Hungary &
Czechoslovakia 36 years
James Hall Soviet Union
& East Germany 40 years
Christopher Boyce Soviet Union 40 years
William Kampiles Soviet Union 40 years 19 years
Veldik Enger Soviet Union 50 years
R.P. Charnyayev Soviet Union 50 years
Marian Zacharski Poland Life 4 years
Aldrich Ames Soviet Union Life
Robert Hanssen Soviet Union Life
* Time served before release is shown where known. Other cases of early release exist.
Aldrich Ames: A Case In Point
Aldrich Ames who spied for an enemy nation (the Soviet Union), committed treason, and was responsible for the deaths of at least 11 American agents, received the same sentence as Jonathan Pollard. Pollard's only indictment was one count of passing classified information to an ally. Pollard spent 7 years in solitary confinement, in the harshest unit of the harshest prison in the Federal system - FCI Marion.
Aldrich Ames' treatment was far more benign, and (except for a relatively short period of time during debriefing) did not include the rigours of long years of solitary; nor was he ever subjected to the harsh conditions of "K" Unit at Marion - even though his offence was far more serious.
This does not make wrong right but it is somewhat instructive.
#14
Why Pollard Should Never Be Released (The Traitor)
The documents that Pollard turned over to Israel were not focussed exclusively on the product of American intelligence -- its analytical reports and estimates. They also revealed how America was able to learn what it did -- a most sensitive area of intelligence defined as "sources and methods." Pollard gave the Israelis vast amounts of data dealing with specific American intelligence systems and how they worked. For example, he betrayed details of an exotic capability that American satellites have of taking off-axis photographs from high in space. While orbiting the earth in one direction, the satellites could photograph areas that were seemingly far out of range. Israeli nuclear-missile sites and the like, which would normally be shielded from American satellites, would thus be left exposed, and could be photographed. "We monitor the Israelis," one intelligence expert told me, "and there's no doubt the Israelis want to prevent us from being able to surveil their country." The data passed along by Pollard included detailed information on the various platforms -- in the air, on land, and at sea -- used by military components of the National Security Agency to intercept Israeli military, commercial, and diplomatic communications.
At the time of Pollard's spying, select groups of American sailors and soldiers trained in Hebrew were stationed at an N.S.A. listening post near Harrogate, England, and at a specially constructed facility inside the American Embassy in Tel Aviv, where they intercepted and translated Israeli signals. Other interceptions came from an unmanned N.S.A. listening post in Cyprus. Pollard's handing over of the data had a clear impact, the expert told me, for "we could see the whole process" -- of intelligence collection -- "slowing down." It also hindered the United States' ability to recruit foreign agents. Another senior official commented, with bitterness, "The level of penetration would convince any self-respecting human source to look for other kinds of work."
A number of officials strongly suspect that the Israelis repackaged much of Pollard's material and provided it to the Soviet Union in exchange for continued Soviet permission for Jews to emigrate to Israel. Other officials go further, and say there was reason to believe that secret information was exchanged for Jews working in highly sensitive positions in the Soviet Union. A significant percentage of Pollard's documents, including some that described the techniques the American Navy used to track Soviet submarines around the world, was of practical importance only to the Soviet Union. One longtime C.I.A. officer who worked as a station chief in the Middle East said he understood that "certain elements in the Israeli military had used it" -- Pollard's material -- "to trade for people they wanted to get out," including Jewish scientists working in missile technology and on nuclear issues. Pollard's spying came at a time when the Israeli government was publicly committed to the free flow of Jewish emigres from the Soviet Union. The officials stressed the fact that they had no hard evidence -- no "smoking gun," in the form of a document from an Israeli or a Soviet archive -- to demonstrate the link between Pollard, Israel, and the Soviet Union, but they also said that the documents that Pollard had been directed by his Israeli handlers to betray led them to no other conclusion.
Posted by: ed ||
04/17/2006 12:12 Comments ||
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#15
They had people 24/7 trying to figure out what he stole.
#17
Again. Let him go NFW. He should have been hung. He commited what would be treason in any other country. He is lucky our law about treason is very particular. He shouldn't be allowed to communicate with anyone outside of prison staff.
Posted by: SPoD ||
04/17/2006 12:28 Comments ||
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#18
Is this bastard in general population? If so, we could solve this problem on the cheap. A sharpened toothbrush and a carton of Marbs cant cost much. $50 total? I'll chip in that much.
Posted by: Mike N. ||
04/17/2006 13:29 Comments ||
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#19
Nice list SA, they should have all been put up against the wall.
President Pervez Musharraf assured foreign investors on Monday night that the April 11 Nishtar Park suicide bombing was a sectarian attack, implying that the carnage in which over 50 people were killed, had no links with the present-day wave of terrorism that has been sweeping the world since 9/11.
"No, no! Certainly not! This wasn't international terrorism! It was domestic terrorism!"
He said this while addressing an annual dinner of the Overseas Investors Chamber of Commerce and Industry at the Karachi Golf Club on Monday evening.
Overseas investors, huh? Hope none of them are anything but the appropriate flavor of Hanafi, Deobandi, or Wahhabi in their religious preferences. Otherwise the domestic terrs might boom them.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/17/2006 22:34 ||
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Pakistan has strongly denied rumours about employing American guards to safeguard Pakistani nuclear installations stating there is no need for that.
The Pakistani foreign office spokesperson Tasneem Aslam, strongly refuting rumours about employing American guards for Pakistans nuclear installations in a weekly briefing on Monday defended Pakistans legitimate nuclear needs, saying it is a well-laid clear-cut policy of the country.
She vehemently denied reports that US Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns or any other American official had ever been allowed to meet Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan, and denied signing of any defence treaty with visiting the Saudi Prince. But she affirmed Pakistans continued defence cooperation with Saudi Arabia.
Tasneem further denied a Time magazine report about a broader government-to-government Pak-Saudi atomic collaboration. She denied contents of the report saying that a chartered Saudi C-130 Hercules transporter made scores of trips between the Dhahran military base and several Pakistani cities, including Lahore and Karachi, between October 2003 and October 2004.
She further denied reports that between October 2004-January 2005, under cover of Haj several Pakistani scientists visited Riyadh, and they were missing from their designated hotels for periods of between fifteen to twenty days.
To a question, she said further talks on the Wular Barrage have been postponed for the time being and new dates for the meeting would be announced later. Replying to yet another question, she said that postponement of talks on Wular Barrage would not effect the second phase of talks, and decisive talks would be held on the issue in the nearest future. The Baghlihar dam issue is under active review of neutral foreign experts, and Pakistan is constantly in touch with the latest developments. The next meeting of the experts would be held in May, in which the case would be further studied, she added.
Tasneem rejected Indian media reports about the presence of Indias notorious smuggler, Dawood Ibrahim in Pakistan. She also strongly refuted any connection between bomb blasts in Varanasi and Karachi. "We condemn them both."
She further reiterated Pakistans joint global efforts in war against terrorism and assured Pakistans continued support and commitment to the Kashmir cause, for lifetime.
Posted by: john ||
04/17/2006 14:54 ||
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#1
But you can bet your ass we know where they are. Which is more than the Russkies can say.
#3
Not since WW2 has the Marines and Rapid Deployment boyz seen so many opportunities for milops - with several nations pretty much all but demanding or daring America to invade and take over. SO MANY BEACH BABES TO SAVE, SO FEW LVTP's!?
Pakistan has asked the United States to provide an air squadron consisting of 10 helicopters and two planes for its Interior Ministry, reported Geo television channel on Sunday.
Brigadier Javed Iqbal Cheema, the ministrys Crisis Management Cell director general, told reporters about Islamabads request for the aircraft to contend with terrorists. Cheema returned from a Pak-US Joint Working Group meeting on combating terrorism in Washington on Saturday. He said the US would be training local law enforcement agencies functionaries in rooting out terrorism. Washington was all praise for Pakistans initiatives against terrorism, he added.
He said the meeting discussed development projects in tribal areas, law and order situation, police reforms and an automated fingerprint identification system. The meeting also deliberated on thwarting drugs smuggling
Posted by: john ||
04/17/2006 10:08 ||
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#1
Of course, US taxpayers need to fund this, Pakistan having to use its own money for...
foreign travel....
Along with such essential expenditure, there is a good deal of waste as well. The foreign tours of our rulers and officials in six months cost $701 million, which means it, will $1400 million for the whole year
What is a poor Pakistani to do... suites at the Waldorf Astoria aren't cheap...
1.4 billion in foreign junkets...
Posted by: john ||
04/17/2006 10:13 Comments ||
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Ima thinkin that maybe Pakland show show something along the lines of seriousness about terrorism before even considering aircraft for them. And then they should be fitted with GPS thingies that if they cross the border into , oh, say India, the secret explosive charge is tested. Of course the aircraft probably wouldn't be much good, post-test, but then again.....
BHOPAL: Police arrested two women in central India on Easter Sunday for allegedly violating state laws on the preaching of Christianity, police said. "The women were distributing pamphlets telling people how they may overcome their problems by following the Bible," said D Srinivas Rao, police chief of Jabalpur district in Madhya Pradesh state.
Oh, horrors! Everybody knows the only way to overcome your problems is to give some money to a Brahmin for some genuine Ganges water.
"Several other objectionable pamphlets have also been seized from their possession."
What was that part about India being a secular state?
The official said that under a state law anyone planning to preach religion must get permission first from authorities. "The offenders had not sought any permission," Rao said.
Silly them. They probably thought they had freedom of speech or something...
The arrests are the latest in a series of similar moves by police in the state, where the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been in power for more than two years.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/17/2006 00:00 ||
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#1
Zero chance of getting a conviction though.
The local police are harassing the missionaries but the law actually forbids forcible conversion - use of force, bribery, other inducements to convert. Preaching is not illegal and the police would have to show the contents of the pamphlet as violating the law.
There are anti-blasphemphy laws that they could attempt to use but the pamhlets would have had to be insulting other religions - quite doubful.
Case will probably be thrown out of court.
Posted by: john ||
04/17/2006 9:22 Comments ||
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Then again, Adolf and Unlce Joe signed a Pact that had one lasting impact: Te collapse of the British and American Communist Parties as members resigned in droves.
Perv sez so many things. So few of them actually pan out.
Pakistan does not need any Sipah, Jaish or Lashkar because the Pakistan Army is the sole Sipah or Lashkar of this country, said President General Pervez Musharraf while talking to Islamic scholars at the Governors House here on Sunday.
Oh, that's a comfort.
You should see the size of their drums.
In the backdrop of the April 11 Nishter Park bombing, the president said that his government would not allow any one party, including religious parties and groups, to indulge in militancy, according to sources.
I thought it wasn't that they were allowing any one party, but that they were allowing all of them...
While exhorting unity among all sects, the president said there was a dire need to create harmony among Muslims. He called upon the scholars to work towards shunning those differences that had been plaguing Muslims and undermining their efforts towards achieving their position and playing their role in the comity of nations. Referring to Shia, Sunni, Wahabi and Deobandi sects, sources quoted the president as saying, Sometimes I get confused about my own identity as a Muslim and I have to think really hard on which sect I belong to.
They keep talking about "Muslim unity," but to Muslims, from what I've seen, that means that one sect gets to be preeminent and the others get to be oppressed. Now, I'll be fair and admit that this doesn't apply across the board. In Indonesia, for instance, the moderate version of Mohammedanism only oppresses the Christian, Buddhist, and Hindu minorities, and the Arabian-flavored sects aren't yet strong enough to throw their full weight around. The Gulf States also seem to have a handle on their violent impulses toward other Muslims. But in Pakistan they're fighting hard to realign their religious pecking order, with the Shias at the bottom, only one step up from Christians, then the remnants of the Sufis, and the Brelvis a step up from them. Hanafis and Deobandis are elbowing each other for pride of place, and the Wahhabis, with their Arabian backing, are coming up fast.
Responding to accusations claiming the Muttahida Qaumi Movements direct involvement in the blast, the president said that he would look into the charges impartially, sources said. Reiterating the Sindh and federal governments position on the nature of the blast as a suicide bombing, the president said justice would be done and the perpetrators of this tragedy would be awarded exemplary punishment. Responding to a complaint that most mosques in DHA (Karachi) were given to religious scholars of a particular sect, the president said he would work towards resolving the issue.
Street fights for control of mosques (and, more importantly, their revenues) are a favorite passtime in Pakland. I think Perv's going to have trouble making them share. In theory, not sharing should be a good thing. The street fights and assassinations are certainly crass, but I don't think that the sects should have to share their holy places. In this country the Catholics don't build churches and then have to share then with the Methodists, though the Episcopalians seem to be working themselves up to the point of street fights over church revenues with their slow-motion schism. But I understand it's difficult to establish a Caliphate when you've got all those different sects, most of them heretical in each other's eyes. There's always the danger somebody's going to nail 95 Theses to the door of the Grand Mosque in Mecca and start a reformation, and then where will the Caliphate be?
Posted by: Fred ||
04/17/2006 00:00 ||
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I stand by Rumsfeld - his management of the overthrow of Afghanistan and Iraq, The Face-to-face with Syria and Iran and NK, and the capitulation of Libya would be called the masterpiece of American power if he were a Democrat
So when did Generals cease to be responsible for outcomes in war? We ask that question amid the latest calls by certain retired senior military officers for Donald Rumsfeld to resign over U.S. difficulties in Iraq.
Major General Charles H. Swannack Jr., for one, was quoted last week as saying the Defense Secretary's "absolute failures in managing the war against Saddam in Iraq" mean he is not "the right person" to continue leading the Pentagon. Mr. Swannack, who commanded the 82nd Airborne in Iraq, joins other ex-uniformed Iraq War critics such as former Centcom Commander Anthony Zinni and retired Army Major General John Batiste. But there's far more behind this firefight than Mr. Rumsfeld's performance.
Mr. Zinni in particular neither fought the Iraq War nor supported it in the first place. He is a longtime advocate of "realism" in the Middle East, which is fancy-speak for leaving Arab dictators alone in the name of "stability." What Mr. Zinni really opposes is President Bush's "forward strategy of freedom," not the means by which the Administration has waged the Iraq campaign.
As for those who've raised the issue of competence, we'd be more persuaded if they weren't so impossibly vague. If their critique is that Mr. Rumsfeld underestimated the Sunni insurgency, well, so did the CIA and military intelligence. Retired General Tommy Franks, who led and planned the campaign that toppled Saddam Hussein, took a victory lap after the invasion even as the insurgency gathered strength.
If their complaint is that Mr. Rumsfeld has since fought the insurgents with too few troops, well, what about current Centcom Commander John Abizaid? He is by far the most forceful advocate of the "small footprint" strategy--the idea that fewer U.S. troops mean less Iraqi resentment of occupation.
Our point here isn't to join the generals, real or armchair, in pointing fingers of blame for what has gone wrong in Iraq. Mistakes are made in every war; there's a reason the word "snafu" began as a military acronym whose meaning we can't reprint in a family newspaper. But if we're going to start assigning blame, then the generals themselves are going to have to assume much of it.
A recent article by former Army Colonel Douglas Macgregor for the Center for Defense Information details how the U.S. advance on Baghdad in March and April 2003 was slowed against Mr. Rumsfeld's wishes by overcautious commanders on the scene. That may have allowed Saddam and many of his supporters to escape to fight the insurgency. General Abizaid also resisted the first assault on Fallujah, in April 2004, which sent a signal of U.S. political weakness. We don't agree with all of Mr. Macgregor's points, but it is likely that these Rumsfeld critics are trying to write their own first, rough draft of historic blame shifting.
Our own view is that the worst mistakes in Iraq have been more political than military, especially in not establishing a provisional Iraqi government from the very start. Instead, the U.S. allowed itself to be portrayed as occupiers, a fact that the insurgency exploited. But the blame for that goes well beyond Mr. Rumsfeld--and would extend to then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and to Mr. Bush himself.
Mr. Rumsfeld's largest mistake may have been giving L. Paul Bremer too free a hand to govern like a viceroy in 2003 and 2004 when a more rapid turnover of political power to Iraqis, and more rapid training of Iraqi forces, might have made a big difference. More than anything else, that unnecessary delay in Iraq's political and self-defense evolution has contributed to the current instability.
But that is for the historians to sort out. What matters now is doing what it takes to prevail in Iraq, setting up a new government and defeating the terrorists. How firing Mr. Rumsfeld will help in any of this, none of the critics say. They certainly aren't offering any better military strategy for victory.
More than likely, Mr. Rumsfeld's departure would create new problems, starting with a crisis of confidence in Iraq about American staying power. What do Mr. Rumsfeld's critics imagine Iraqis think as they watch former commanders assigning blame? And how would a Rumsfeld resignation contribute to the credible threat of force necessary to meet America's next major security challenge, which is Iran's attempt to build a nuclear bomb? Sacking the Defense Secretary mid-conflict would only reinforce the Iranian mullahs' belief that they have nothing to worry about because Americans have no stomach for a prolonged engagement in their part of the world.
The anti-Rumsfeld generals have a right to their opinion. But there's a reason the Founders provided for civilian control of the military, and a danger in military men using their presumed authority to push elected Administrations around. As for Democrats and their media allies, we can only admire their sudden new deference to the senior U.S. officer corps, which follows their strange new respect for the "intelligence community" they also once despised. U.S. military recruiters might not be welcome on Ivy League campuses, but they're heroes when they trash the Bush Administration.
Mr. Rumsfeld's departure has been loudly demanded in various quarters for a couple of years now, without much success, and on Friday Mr. Bush said he still has his every confidence. We suspect the President understands that most of those calling for Mr. Rumsfeld's head are really longing for his.
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/17/2006 19:56 ||
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#1
Thanks for posting this, Frank. A nice summation of the current situation.
#2
For me it looks like these Generals are worried - they know, like the Lefties and Anti-Amer agendists do, that IRAN = NORTH KOREA = TAIWAN, etc bears high risk of geopolitical- and regional/global nuclear confrontation between the USA-NATO/West versus Russia-China. The GWOT for the US-International Lefts > forcing America under national and global Socialist order, whether voluntarily or by armed force - 'tis also why the RINO CINO agenda-less US Dems are such for a reason, as anything detrimental or catastrophic must be blamed on America, the GOP-Right, Americanism-Westernism includ Democapitalism, and of course the American people/nation in general. CHICOMS OR LEFTY INTELLECTUALS CAN'T HAVE A PRE-PLANNED, AMERICA-BLAMED, US-SPECIFIC NATION-WIDE HOLOCAUST IFF AMERICAN PEOPLES-SOCIETY-ETHNIC GROUPS AREN'T BLAMED FOR ANYTHING, NOW CAN THEY??? There's always Saint Bill's "Yes, I lied to you = did I?"
surreal, pc, lawyerly "MONICA DEFENSE"!? Iff AMerica needs a draft, lets have a draft - no shame in it as ALL AMERICANS ARE IN A FIGHT FOR OUR SURVIVAL, FREEDOMS. SOVEREIGNTY, BELIEF SYSTEMS, AND WAY OF LIFE ETC. IFF AMERICA LOSES, AMER'S ENEMIES ARE GONNA KILL US, ALL OF US, ANYWAYS. DRAFT > USA can always "trim the fat" once the war is de facto won. WHAT THE LEFT WANTS IS EITHER "VICHY AMERIKA" SSR = AMERICA DESTROYED - AMERICA CAN WAGE WAR/FIGHT TO WIN EMPIRE BUT THEN SURRENDER OR FORCIBLY LOSE IT AFTERWARDS. FOr me thats grotesquely immoral, treasonous, perverse and just plain D***'ed EVIL.
#3
the idea that fewer U.S. troops mean less Iraqi resentment of occupation.
Bullshit. Someone's not paying attention to the polling done on the ground in Iraq. People above all else want security, blaming the lack thereof on the US. So clearly this idea ain't working. Strike one Rumsfeld.
They certainly aren't offering any better military strategy for victory.
Some of them are. It's just that it's falling on deaf ears.
Polling, how many former Saddam supports did they include in that little poll?
Considering that both military and civilian deaths are down from a year ago, I'd say the security is improving. As far as security goes, that in the end is up to the Iraqis themselves. I don't care if its a bunch of AK47 wankers in South LA or Baghdad, the locals are the ones who need to participate if they want their neighborhoods cleaned of the troublemakers. BTW, how successful has the in place LE done in purging the gangs from LA? Miami? Detroit? etc. They've been working on it for how many years with success?
As Lt. Col. Patrick Donahoe scans the horizon through the mud-splattered, inch-thick windows of his armored Humvee, he can almost see Bosnia through the palm trees.
It is not there yet, Colonel Donahoe said, but the communal hatred he has witnessed in this area of Iraq, the blindingly ignorant things people say, the pulling apart of Shiite and Sunni towns that were once tightly intertwined are all reminiscent of what he saw years ago as a young Army captain on a peacekeeping mission in the former Yugoslavia.
"You talk to people here and it's literally the same conversations I heard in Bosnia," Colonel Donahoe said. "I had a police colonel tell me the other day that all the people in Jurf," a predominantly Sunni town, "are evil, including the children."
Jurf as-Sakhr, also known as Jurf, is 40 miles south of Baghdad. It is a community of crumbly dirt farms and dilapidated weapons factories and boys selling fluffy white chickens alongside the road. It sits right on a sectarian fault line that in the past few months has cracked wide open, and Colonel Donahoe is now back to playing peacekeeper.
The work is emblematic of a new role for the American soldier in Iraq, because as the threat has shifted, so has the mission. Sectarian violence is killing more people and destabilizing Iraq more than the antigovernment insurgency ever did. In response, American commanders, especially those in mixed Sunni-Shiite areas like Jurf, are throwing their armor, troops and money directly into the divide, trying to keep Iraq from violently partitioning the way Bosnia did.
What complicates their new mission is that the insurgency is far from over. It keeps mutating, finding new recruits and even new weapons; one soldier in Jurf was recently shot in the arm by an arrow.
Commanders have to simultaneously wage war and push peace, and Colonel Donahoe, along with other American officials, said the outcome of the entire American enterprise might hinge on how well they pulled off this balancing act.
"This is the critical year," Colonel Donahoe said. "If we don't turn things around, if we don't get the Shiites and Sunnis to stop killing each other, I'm not sure there's much else we can do."
Colonel Donahoe is experimenting with a number of tactics, like microloans to re-establish trade between Shiite and Sunni merchants; a political program to restore Sunni participation; and joint police patrols not joint American-Iraqi, but joint Shiite-Sunni.
He was trained to maneuver tanks, but he spends much of his time parked on carpets, chatting with sheiks, trying to ease suspicions one glass of tea at a time.
His soldiers have an even harder adjustment to make. Many are on their second tour in Iraq, and they have returned to a different war. When they were here before, in 2004, it was all about crushing the Sunni-led insurgency. Now, it is all about checking Shiite power.
Back then, if a lieutenant in his 20's went out to meet with a gray-bearded elder, it was to coax him to cooperate with the Americans, not with his neighbor.
The soldiers' quality of life, if it can be called that, may have improved. During the previous tour, the men cooked chicken in ammunition boxes and showered with hoses, if at all. Now they make Baskin-Robbins ice cream floats in the mess hall and sleep in air-conditioned bliss.
But this does not necessarily translate into higher morale. Peacekeeping, no matter what the stakes, is not war-fighting, many soldiers said. It does not deliver the same sense of adventure or the same sort of bonds.
"I'll never forget those guys I crossed the border with," said Command Sgt. Maj. Elijah King Jr., who is on his second tour. "It's not like that anymore."
The troops in Jurf are part of the First Battalion, 67th Armor, based at Fort Hood, Tex. The battalion, part of the Fourth Infantry Division, has about 1,000 soldiers and first came to Iraq in 2003 as part of the invasion force before rolling north of Baghdad for counterinsurgency patrols that continued through early 2004.
The battalion returned to Iraq in December 2005 and is now thinly spread over 2,700 square miles between Iskandariya to the north and Karbala to the south. Because of all the insurgent activity, the military includes this area in what it refers to as the Triangle of Death.
One of the hottest spots is Jurf, once home to lush date plantations, a Scud missile testing site and the Medina Division of Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard. After the invasion, Jurf, with its concentration of former officers, Baathists, weapons experts and leaders of the powerful Janabi tribe, predictably festered, becoming a terrorist sanctuary.
Just south of Jurf is Hamiya, a mostly Shiite farming town that never enjoyed Jurf's whiff of privilege. While Jurf farmers drove tractors, Hamiya farmers swung hoes, and in an atmosphere of rising sectarian tensions, these deep-seated class rivalries eventually exploded. South of Hamiya are the almost purely Shiite towns of Musayyib and Sedda.
By the time the battalion arrived in December, insurgents had established an island hideaway near Jurf on a swampy spit of land between the Euphrates River and an irrigation canal. They stashed thousands of artillery shells there and ran a clandestine court, where insurgent judges would try, torture and execute collaborators, the Iraqi police said. Mutilated bodies were often found bobbing in the swamps.
Colonel Donahoe's soldiers soon discovered wires from roadside bombs snaking back to the island. On Jan. 10, they invaded, blowing up homes and unearthing an enormous weapons cache, though the insurgents apparently caught wind of the operation because by the time the tanks rumbled ashore, they had vanished. The bomb attacks continued, and in February, soldiers in a Bradley fighting vehicle fired on two suspects who they said tried to blow up a convoy and took off running, right past a house.
When the soldiers arrived at the house, the colonel said, a woman was screaming in the driveway, waving the severed leg of her daughter. The girl had been hit by an American shell and bled to death in front of the soldiers.
The troops have also been enmeshed in strange local dynamics. A few weeks ago, a schoolgirl came to them with an armload of books that included a chemical weapons training manual. She led the soldiers to her father, a former Iraqi Army colonel suspected of being an insurgent. After the soldiers detained him, they gave the girl a chocolate bar.
They have also gone on raids with local security forces. But this, too, has its risks.
One night last month, American troops helped police officers from Hamiya, the working-class Shiite town, aggressively round up 10 men, all Sunnis, from Jurf.
"I left thinking, wait a sec, were we just part of some sort of sectarian revenge?" the colonel said.
As things quieted down with the Sunnis, more problems emerged with the Shiites. Shiite-led police forces began detaining Sunnis and refusing to release them even after American commanders concluded they were innocent.
Yassir Naameh Naoufel, a Sunni elder in Jurf, said Sunnis could no longer visit Musayyib, a Shiite town. "If we do, we might disappear," he said.
Meanwhile, the Mahdi Army, a force of armed men loyal to the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, has been pushing into Musayyib, introducing a harsh brand of Islamic law.
According to Staff Sgt. Joseph Schicker, a psychological operations soldier, Mahdi militiamen recently threw battery acid on a woman whose ankles were showing and dragged a man accused of being gay through the streets.
Colonel Donahoe draws on the Balkans for an easy metaphor.
"Moktada is like Milosevic," he said, referring to the former Serbian leader. "He'll do anything to stay in power."
Colonel Donahoe, 38, calls Bosnia his "formative military experience," and it seems that the nine months he spent there in 1996 has been as valuable for him in Iraq as the 15 years he trained as a tank commander.
At a recent meeting he organized between Shiite and Sunni imams, the colonel shared one of his Bosnian lessons. "Those people were intermarried just like you," he said. "They lived together just like you. But certain leaders trying to grab power ripped that country apart." The imams nodded, the Shiites on one side of the room, the Sunnis on the other.
The colonel said he wanted to "reintegrate" local politics. The Musayyib district council, which oversees all the towns in an area with a total population of around 200,000, was a mix of Shiites and Sunnis before the war. Now it is run by 17 Shiites, the majority of whom support Mr. Sadr, with two nonvoting Sunni members.
To make matters worse, elders in Hamiya, which is technically part of the Jurf subdistrict but is mostly Shiite, now want to secede from Jurf, even though Hamiya has been part of Jurf for decades. The colonel said what he needed more than anything was a bona fide expert on governing.
"What do I know about running a district council?" he said.
He is also trying to revive trade links by using some of the battalion's $495,000 in reconstruction money to start a microloan program. The problem is, many merchants in Jurf and Musayyib are too frightened to travel from one area to the other to do the business they used to.
Tip-toeing through these issues is far more delicate than hunting insurgents, and the colonel seems to sense the difficulties of keeping his rank and file engaged. He tells all of his soldiers that they are now diplomats, and he uses them to interview merchants, for example, and protect the construction site of a new police station in Jurf. Insurgents blew up the last one, and the colonel is waiting to rebuild before taking on the delicate task of intermingling police forces.
"The only way this is going to work is if the patrols are 50-50, Shiite-Sunni," he said.
Shiite police officials have agreed, in theory, but have hired few Sunnis so far.
The colonel cited signs of progress. Bomb attacks are down. More shops are open. Fewer bodies are found bobbing in the swamp.
But it is not clear how receptive Shiites and Sunnis are to the reconciliation efforts. Often, the only common ground is anti-American anger, or at least disappointment.
Salah al-Shimeri, an Iraqi police official and a Shiite, told American soldiers during a recent meeting, "I just wish you could put this country back to the way you found it."
Sometimes, the colonel said, he is unsure whether that can be done. "How will it end?" he said one night. "I don't know."
"I think it will come down to an attrition of spirit. Either they'll get tired of fighting and quit. Or we will."
#1
Ancient hatreds aren't going to go away overnight. It will take generations of active anti-hate actions to overcome it. It took 100 years in America to start to start getting over it as well, and there is still work to do.
Rival Shiite leaders agreed Sunday to allow Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari's party to nominate the next prime minister on the condition that Mr. Jaafari step down, Iraqi politicians said. The move could bring the Shiite bloc closer to resolving a nearly two-month impasse over the candidate for prime minister and speed the formation of a new government.
As of Sunday evening, Mr. Jaafari remained unwilling to abdicate, but officials in his party were discussing options, Shiite leaders said.
To allow more time for negotiations, the acting speaker of Parliament, Adnan Pachachi, canceled a meeting of the 275-member assembly that had been scheduled for Monday. He said in a telephone interview that he had acted "against my better judgment," but that a solution might be reached within a few days. Mr. Pachachi called the meeting last week to try to set a deadline for the Shiites to resolve the issue and present a nominee to Parliament.
In recent weeks, rival factions within the Shiite bloc, which holds 130 seats in Parliament, have been jockeying for the post of prime minister. The bloc, the largest in Parliament, has the right to make a nomination. The Shiites have been trying to come up with another nominee for nearly two months. The candidate who lost to Mr. Jaafari in the secret ballot, Adel Abdul Mahdi, was considered a front-runner. But Mr. Sadr despises Mr. Abdul Mahdi's party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.
It appeared Sunday that Mr. Abdul Mahdi would take a vice president position rather than continue fighting for the nomination, said Khalid al-Attiyah, an independent member of the Shiite bloc. "He's no longer running for the premiership," said Mr. Pachachi, the speaker.
Mr. Attiyah and Mr. Pachachi said the Shiite leaders agreed that Mr. Jaafari's political group, the Islamic Dawa Party, could nominate a candidate if it withdrew Mr. Jaafari, but it was unclear whether Dawa officials would be able to persuade Mr. Jaafari, the party's leader, to step down. Shiite politicians mention two party deputies inside Dawa Jawad al-Maliki and Ali al-Adeeb as possible replacements. Some Shiite officials said they saw those men as weak, like Mr. Jaafari. "The options are limited for the Dawa Party," Mr. Attiyah said.
BAGHDAD - Iraqs Shia Alliance on Sunday appeared close to reaching a deal to replace Ibrahim Al Jaafari as its nominee for prime minister, which could break a deadlock on a new government, officials in the bloc said.
The officials said they were close to an agreement to replace Jaafari with a member of his Dawa party. We are close to an agreement on Jaafari. It involves replacing him with a Dawa leader, one of the officials who spoke on condition of anonymity told Reuters. If the United Iraqi Alliance does replace Jaafari, it could break a four-month deadlock over a national unity government whose formation Iraqi politicians hope will avert a sectarian civil war.
But finding a new Alliance candidate threatens to break apart the bloc and no prime minister will have any magic solutions to Iraqs Sunni Arab insurgency, sectarian bloodshed and a battered economy that has scared away foreign investors.
Acting parliament speaker Adnan Pachachi said Iraqs political blocs hoped to reach a last-minute deal on Sunday to agree on top government positions before the assemblys next session on Monday.
He said failure to do so could delay a new government for at least another month and force the parties to choose a parliament speaker, a presidential council and prime minister in stages. The parliament will convene tomorrow morning and a deal is expected. If not the Shia Alliance will ask for some more time, Pachachi told Reuters in an interview. If we cannot reach a concrete package deal then a president will be nominated and more time will be given to the Shia Alliance to nominate a prime minister. We prefer one package. If they ask for more time, the parliament has a right to choose one position at a time.
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/17/2006 00:00 ||
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AP forgot to put sneer quotes around "legitimate". I guess their sneer quoterator is in the shop.
The Palestinians' new Hamas leaders called the attack a legitimate response to Israeli "aggression."
Or maybe not. Looks like it works just fine. Hmmmm.
The response by Hamas leaders represented a sharp departure from the previous Palestinian leadership's immediate condemnations of such attacks. "We think that this operation ... is a direct result of the policy of the occupation and the brutal aggression and siege committed against our people," said Khaled Abu Helal, spokesman for the Hamas-led Interior Ministry. Earlier, Moussa abu Marzouk, a Hamas leader abroad, told Al-Jazeera television that "the Israeli side must feel what the Palestinian feels, and the Palestinian defends himself as much as he can."
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, of the rival Fatah Party, condemned the bombing, calling it a "terrorist attack."
Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Gideon Meir said Israel held Hamas ultimately responsible for such attacks because it is "giving support to all the other terrorist organizations. From our point of view it doesn't matter if it comes from Al Aqsa, Islamic Jihad or Hamas. They all come out of the same school of terrorism led by Hamas," he said.
#4
From our point of view it doesn't matter if it comes from Al Aqsa, Islamic Jihad or Hamas. They all come out of the same school of terrorism led by Hamas," he said.
So in other words, O Lions of Islam, keep your fanciful self-aggrandizing names to yourselves, to us you're all just punks.
Sunday, April 16, the Palestinians unveiled their new rocket-launcher in the Gaza Strip. It is capable of shooting 10 Grad (Quds-3) rockets simultaneously from a truck and is designed exclusively to hit Israeli civilian targets within a range of 18-30 km.
In Jerusalem, at the same time, six human rights groups sought a High Court injunction to mute the effectiveness of the IDFs artillery bombardments against Palestinian missile sites for fear of endangering Palestinian civilians. These groups have never pursued court action against the daily Palestinian bombardments which single out Israeli civilian locations.
The new Palestinian weapon threatens not only the villages surrounding the Gaza Strip and Ashkelon, but also the towns of Ashdon, Netivot and Ofakim, as DEBKAfile first reported on March 30. The new system was presented to Chairman Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority, which is not too cash-strapped to finance the purchase.
DEBKAfiles military sources reveal three Palestinians objectives in upgrading their missile weaponry:
1. To maximize Israel casualties and improve the missiles accuracy. Friday, April 4, a single Qassam missile just missed the Kibbutz Yad Mordecai sports hall causing some damage. A 10-rocket volley of 170kg of explosives would have achieved a vastly broader spread of death and damage than the primitive hit-or-miss Qassam missiles fired daily from the Gaza Strip.
2. To reach and devastate the sensitive Israel power, port, oil and pipeline facilities in Ashkelon
DEBKAfiles sources add: The Palestinian missile crews do not need to hit the core of the big Ashkelon power station; the transformer plant would suffice to black out the entire country. Restoring the power supply to all parts of Israel would take several days.
3. The Palestinians decided that the energy a missile crew expends for evading Israel air force planes and drones to shoot a single missile might just as well be invested for launching 10 Grad rockets.
Last week, after Israeli artillery shelling failed to curb the Palestinians daily Qassam missile blitz from the Gaza Strip, defense minister Shaul Mofaz cut the safety range of Israeli artillery fire against missile sites from 300 to 100 meters distant rom Palestinian civilian houses. Sunday, April 16, six human rights groups asked the high court to restore the former safety margin so as not to endanger Palestinian lives.
US ally Qatar followed Tehran and pledged $50m to the Hamas government Monday.
To transfer the $50 million dollars pledged to the Hamas-led Palestinian government, Tehran has simply opened an account at the Misr International Bank (MIBank) in Cairo, according to DEBKAfiles Middle East sources. This back-door financing route was approved by the Egyptian government. Our sources add that control of the state-owned MIBank was acquired by Frances banking giant Societe Generale which is also, according to DEBKAfiles intelligence sources, Tehrans main banking channel in Europe. Therefore, the promised Iranian funding of $50 million can be transferred to Paris and thence to Cairo and the Gaza Strip, easily busting the aid and financing boycott the US and Israel imposed on the new Palestinian government.
The same vehicle is also available to Moscow. Another of Frances Societe Generales recent acquisitions is control of the big Russian bank Delta-Credit. Last Friday, April 14, Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov promised financial assistance to the Hamas government.
As for Egypt, Cairo may go through the motions of blacklisting the Palestinian government under radical Islamic rule, but Egyptian border officials have allowed the Gaza-Rafah crossing to become a two-way highway for the comings and goings of Hamas officials to any Arab or Muslim country they please. This license plus the availability of an Egyptian banking channel expose the Mubarak government as the silent backer of Hamas efforts to establish itself as the legitimate Palestinian government.
#1
So how do the Iranians and Egyptians propose to get the money or the goods it buys into Gaza? Sounds like funds are from a terrorism sponsor and sworn enemy and liable to seizure by the Israelis.
Posted by: ed ||
04/17/2006 9:21 Comments ||
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#2
Just like before the Iraq war, France and Russia will do anything to make sure they get their cut of the action.
#4
Besides the Paleos need about $100M a month to get by. I don't see anyone stepping up to a long term commitment. The funds offered by Iran and Qatr cover arrears and will be gone the second they arrive. The only Russia can support these guys in the long term is by counterfeiting.
#5
At this point, Israel needs to intervene punitively against both France and Russia. Something on the order of hacking their respective finance ministries and making some very suspicious fund transfers that will be easily picked up by auditors. And so egregious that they will have to do something about it.
Such conniving tit-for-tat has long been used as "stick" diplomacy.
GAZA: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has offered to hand control of the Gaza Strip's border with Egypt to the new government led by the militant group Hamas, officials said on Sunday. Last Tuesday, special forces loyal to Abbas assumed control of the crossing, a move that heightened tensions between the president and Hamas, which took office on March 29. "The discussions are still going on. Until now Hamas has not responded to the offer," said an aide to Abbas. An official from Abbas's Fatah movement in Gaza said the president had sent a letter to Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh which said border control would pass to Hamas. The official did not give a timeframe. "The Hamas government will be held responsible if the crossing is blocked by Israel or if the European monitors take a decision to withdraw," the official said.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/17/2006 00:00 ||
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#1
I've long advocated targetted assassinations of Mullahs and Imams that preach violence. If the US and Russia both created "wetwork" teams, sent to a handful of trouble spots, with the idea of taking out such "soft targets", much of this nonsense would die down a lot quicker than it has.
Priests of any strip *hate* having to pay the price for their sermons. And boy do they put a cork in it if personal risk is involved. Once the word got out, sermon topics would be a debate between the merits of Hello Kitty vs. the Teletubbies.
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/17/2006 20:12 Comments ||
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#3
Food and job riots have occurred, not a good thng for local Mullahs to see in a nation with alleged several times the number of fighting or available manpower as Europe. Lots and lotsa of jobless or low-pay young men wid no food - Not as bad YET vv CUBA or espec NORTH KOREA, but its a'happenin'.
China, Russia welcome Iran into the fold
By M K Bhadrakumar
The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which maintained it had no plans for expansion, is now changing course. Mongolia, Iran, India and Pakistan, which previously had observer status, will become full members. SCO's decision to welcome Iran into its fold constitutes a political statement. Conceivably, SCO would now proceed to adopt a common position on the Iran nuclear issue at its summit meeting June 15.
Speaking in Beijing as recently as January 17, the organization's secretary general Zhang Deguang had been quoted by Xinhua news agency as saying: "Absorbing new member states needs a legal basis, yet the SCO has no rules concerning the issue. Therefore, there is no need for some Western countries to worrywhether India, Iran or other countries would become new members."
The SCO, an Intergovernmental organization whose working languages are Chinese and Russian, was founded in Shanghai on June 15, 2001 by China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgystan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. The SCO's change of heart appears set to involve the organization in Iran's nuclear battle and other ongoing regional issues with the United States.
Visiting Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mohammadi told Itar-TASS in Moscow that the membership expansion "could make the world more fair". And he spoke of building an Iran-Russia "gas-and-oil arc" by coordinating their activities as energy producing countries. Mohammadi also touched on Iran's intention to raise the issue of his country's nuclear program and its expectations of securing SCO support.
The timing of the SCO decision appears to be significant. By the end of April the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency is expected to report to the United Nations Security Council in New York regarding Iran's compliance with the IAEA resolutions and the Security Council's presidential statement, which stresses the importance of Iran "reestablishing full, sustained suspension of uranium-enrichment activities".
The SCO membership is therefore a lifeline for Iran in political and economic terms. The SCO is not a military bloc but is nonetheless a security organization committed to countering terrorism, religious extremism and separatism. SCO membership would debunk the US propaganda about Iran being part of an "axis of evil".
The SCO secretary general's statement on expansion coincided with several Chinese and Russian commentaries last week voicing disquiet about the US attempts to impose UN sanctions against Iran. Comparison has been drawn with the Iraq War when the US seized on sanctions as a pretext for invading Iraq.
A People's Daily commentary on April 13 read: "The real intention behind the US fueling the Iran issue is to prompt the UN to impose sanctions against Iran, and to pave the way for a regime change in that country. The US's global strategy and its Iran policy emanate out of its decision to use various means, including military means, to change the Iranian regime. This is the US's set target and is at the root of the Iran nuclear issue."
The commentary suggested Washington seeks a regime change in Iran with a view to establishing American hegemony in the Middle East. Gennady Yefstafiyev, a former general in Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service, wrote: "The US's long term goals in Iran are obvious: to engineer the downfall of the current regime; to establish control over Iran's oil and gas; and to use its territory as the shortest route for the transportation of hydrocarbons under US control from the regions of Central Asia and the Caspian Sea bypassing Russia and China. This is not to mention Iran's intrinsic military and strategic significance."
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said: "I would not be in a hurry to draw conclusions, because passions are too often being whipped up around Iran's nuclear program ... I would also advise not to whip up passions."
Sergei Kiriyenko, head of Russia's nuclear power agency and a former prime minister, said Iran was simply not capable of enriching uranium on an industrial scale. "It has long since been known that Iran has a 'cascade' of only 164 centrifuges, and obtaining low-grade uranium from this 'cascade' was only a matter of time. This did not come as a surprise to us."
Yevgeniy Velikhov, president of Kurchatov Institute, Russia's nuclear research center, told Tier-TASS, "Launching experimental equipment of this type is something any university can do."
By virtue of SCO membership, Iran can partake of the various SCO projects, which in turn means access to technology, increased investment and trade, infrastructure development such as banking, communication, etc. It would also have implications for global energy security.
The SCO was expected to set up a working group of experts ahead of the summit in June with a view to evolving a common "energy strategy" and jointly undertaking pipeline projects, oil exploration and related activities.
A third aspect of the SCO decision to expand its membership involves regional integration processes. Sensing that the SCO was gaining traction, Washington had sought observer status at its summit meeting last June, but was turned down. This rebuff - along with SCO's timeline for a reduced American military presence in Central Asia, the specter of deepening Russia-China cooperation and the setbacks to US diplomacy in Central Asia as a whole - prompted a policy review in Washington.
Following a Central Asian tour in October by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Washington's new regional policy began surfacing. The re-organization of the US State Department's South Asia Bureau (created in August 1992) to include the Central Asian states, projection of US diplomacy in terms of "Greater Central Asia" and the push for observer status with the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) should be seen in perspective.
US diplomacy is working toward getting Central Asian states to orientate toward South Asia - weaning them away from Russia and China. (Hamid Karzai's government in Kabul has also failed to respond to SCO's overtures but has instead sought full membership in SAARC.)
But US diplomacy is not making appreciable progress in Central Asia. Washington pins hopes on Astana (Kazakhstan) being its pivotal partner in Central Asia. The US seeks an expansion of its physical control over Kazakhstan's oil reserves and formalization of Kazakh oil transportation via Baku-Ceyhan pipeline, apart from carving out a US role in Caspian Sea security.
But Kazakhstan is playing hard to get. President Nurusultan Nazarbayev's visit to Moscow on April 3 reaffirmed his continued dependence on Russian oil pipelines.
Meanwhile, Washington's relations with Tashkent (Uzbekistan) remain in a state of deep chill. The US attempt to "isolate" President Islam Karimov is not working. (Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is visiting Tashkent on April 25.) Again, Tajikistan relies heavily on Russia's support. In Kyrgyzstan, despite covert US attempts to create dissensions within the regime, President Burmanbek Bakiyev's alliance with Prime Minister Felix Kulov (which enjoys Russia's backing) is holding.
The Central Asians have also displayed a lack of interest in the idea of "Greater Central Asia". This became apparent during the conference sponsored by Washington recently in Kabul focusing on the theme.
The SCO's enlargement move, in this regional context, would frustrate the entire US strategy. Ironically, the SCO would be expanding into South Asia and the Gulf region, while "bypassing" Afghanistan.
This at a time when the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is stepping up its presence in Afghanistan. (General James L Jones, supreme allied commander Europe, said recently that NATO would assume control of Afghanistan by August.)
So far NATO has ignored SCO. But NATO contingents in Afghanistan would shortly be "surrounded" by SCO member countries. NATO would face a dilemma.
If it recognizes that SCO has a habitation and a name (in Central Asia, South Asia and the Gulf), then, what about NATO's claim as the sole viable global security arbiter in the 21st century? NATO would then be hard-pressed to explain the raison d'etre of its expansion into the territories of the former Soviet Union.
M K Bhadrakumar served as a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service for more than 29 years, with postings including India's ambassador to Uzbekistan (1995-1998) and to Turkey (1998-2001).
#3
Adding Pakistan is like inviting the fox into the henhouse.
SCO will become a talkshop. Pakistan will bring up the topic of Kashmir every other week.
Posted by: john ||
04/17/2006 14:16 Comments ||
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#4
Hope these folks are aware that in Western law, if your dog bites someone, you are liable. Something to consider before inviting Iran into your organization. Also, I suspect that the 12th Imam would deal harshly with most of the infidel countries in this group.
#5
India's Maoists were ascribed yetserday as being the greatest single threat to India's government and abilty to survive - no surprise there. Iran and its desire to be THE BASE FOR [IRANIAN-CENTRIC] [NUCLEARIZED]GLOBAL MUSLIM EMPIRE remains a "wild card" to both East and West. Better buy lots of popcorn, as its gonna be interesting watching the attempts at implosions and counter-implosions all along central and East Asia. * "RED TURBAN/RED STAR WHITE TURBAN[-IZATIONS].
The Iranian government has intensified efforts to illegally obtain weapons technology from the United States, contracting with dealers across the country for spare parts to maintain its aging American-made air force planes, its missile forces and its alleged nuclear weapons program, according to federal law enforcement authorities.
Over the past two years, arms dealers have exported or attempted to export to Iran experimental aircraft; machines used for measuring the strength of steel, which is critical in the development of nuclear weapons; assembly kits for F-14 Tomcat fighter jets; and a range of components used in missile systems and fighter-jet engines.
"Iran's weapons acquisition program is becoming more organized," said Stephen Bogni, acting chief of the Arms and Strategic Technology Investigations Unit of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). "They are looking for more varied and sophisticated technology. Night-vision equipment, unmanned aircraft, missile technology" and weapons of mass destruction.
Federal agents say that as tensions increase over Tehran's alleged nuclear weapons program, so does the concern that Iran might strike at U.S. forces and personnel stationed in Iraq and other countries if the United States or its allies take military action against that program. In recent weeks, Tehran has announced new weapons systems, including missiles it claims to be invisible to radar and torpedoes too fast to be avoided, although U.S. experts have questioned Iran's assertions about its capabilities.
The Bush administration says it is committed to a diplomatic solution to address its concerns that Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons. Iran contends that it wants only to generate electricity. But, in recent months, it has flouted U.N. Security Council demands that it abandon key parts of its program, and, last week, it announced that it had successfully enriched uranium.
Calls for comment to the Iranian Mission to the United Nations were not returned.
"Most of the material the Iranians are seeking is aging technology, but it's technology that could still hurt the United States and its allies today," said Serge Duarte, acting special agent in charge of ICE investigations in San Diego. That city and Los Angeles are believed to be the two centers of the illicit Iranian weapons trade.
In the 1960s and '70s, the United States sold some of its most advanced weapons systems to Iran, when it was led by Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Iran's air force received F-14 Tomcats, F-5 Tigers, F-4 Phantoms, C-130 transport planes and helicopters manufactured by Bell, Boeing and Sikorsky. U.S. sales ended with the 1979 Iranian revolution. Iran's war with Iraq from 1980 to 1988 helped deplete Iran's forces. U.S. contacts with Iran were further restricted in 1995 when President Bill Clinton signed an order effectively prohibiting almost all trade and investment between the two countries.
Since that time, businesses with ties to Iran have been on a hunt in the United States for anything that can keep Iran's military machine moving, federal agents said. Since 2002, there have been 17 major cases involving the illegal shipment of weapons technology to Iran, outpacing the 15 cases involving China, the other main nation seeking U.S. military goods, according to data provided by the Department of Homeland Security. Since 2000, the U.S. government has instituted 800 export investigations involving Iran.
Although arms dealers work nationwide, many of the Iranian cases have connections to Southern California, which remains a center for aeronautics and is home to the biggest concentration of Iranians outside of Tehran. Some neighborhoods of Los Angeles, such as Brentwood on the west side and parts of the San Fernando Valley, are jokingly referred to as "Irangeles."
Federal agents said the main method for obtaining U.S. technology is not through espionage but through simple business deals. "We're not talking about 007 running around trying to steal these parts," Bogni said. "We're talking about the Iranian government putting out shopping lists to brokers and greedy businessmen."
Two recent cases illustrate the challenges facing federal agents.
ICE agents on March 16 arrested Mohammad Fazeli, an American of Iranian descent, after he allegedly tried to export a box of pressure sensors to Iran via the United Arab Emirates. The small sensors, manufactured by Honeywell, are normally used in black-box, data-recording devices for aircraft. Federal agents said they can also be used in bombs and missile-guidance systems.
Fazeli was captured as he allegedly sought to mail the package out of the United States.
"It's not illegal to possess these parts. It's only illegal to export them. That's the challenge," said Louis Rodi III, chief of ICE's national security unit in Los Angeles. "Arms dealers take possession of the products here and then ship them themselves. So we have to be on them like a glove."
Bogni said many weapons dealers are still not aware of U.S. regulations prohibiting the export of controlled technology. Thus, since fall 2002, ICE agents have conducted 12,500 seminars with U.S. weapons manufacturers and exporters.
A day after Fazeli was arrested, another man, Arif Ali Durrani, a Pakistani, was convicted in federal court in San Diego on five counts involving the illegal export of fighter-jet components to Iran.
Durrani was indicted for selling, among other things, nozzles for engines used in the F-5s, the workhorses of the Iranian air force. David Pinchetti, an agent with the Pentagon's Defense Criminal Investigative Service who worked on the case, said Durrani purchased the nozzles for $1,500 apiece and sold them to Iranian Aircraft Industries Co. for $48,000 each.
Of interest to federal authorities since the 1980s, Durrani was a flamboyant dealmaker with a house in California valued at $2.5 million and a fleet of fine cars, on both the West and East coasts, according to Steven Arruda, a former ICE agent. Durrani once showed up in a Porsche to receive delivery of a helicopter part from a manufacturer in Connecticut. When the crate would not fit in his car, he junked the crate and threw the part in the back of his roadster, taking it directly to a freight forwarder at Kennedy International Airport, Arruda said.
Durrani was arrested in 1986 for illegally exporting Hawk missile parts to Iran. A few weeks later, while Durrani was in jail awaiting trial, the Iran-contra scandal broke, revealing that Reagan administration officials had approved weapons sales to Iran and were using the proceeds to fund guerrillas fighting the leftist government in Nicaragua.
Durrani's defense contended that he had been working for the U.S. government. The jury convicted him anyway in April 1987, and he was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Durrani left the United States in the late 1990s for France and then resurfaced in a Mexican beach community near the U.S. border, where his U.S.-born wife opened a Mexican restaurant and he started a furniture factory. Durrani also resumed his weapons technology business, using two partners in the United States to buy and ship products wanted by Iran's air force, federal agents said.
On June 15, in the middle of the U.S. investigation of Durrani, the Mexican government deported him to Pakistan, federal agents said. Acting on a tip, they met his plane, which was going through Los Angeles, and arrested him. Durrani's two co-conspirators subsequently pleaded guilty to violating U.S. arms export guidelines. Durrani, who was found guilty by a federal jury of those charges, is scheduled to be sentenced in June and could face 45 years in prison.
Durrani's attorney, Moe Nadim, vowed to appeal the verdict.
#4
HHHHmmmmm, 12,500 seminars since 2002, and still the arms dealers don't know!? Now lets all be good Clintonians and take out a cigarette, smoke it, and exhale in uncaring, 1000-yard stare smoky fortitude like PEPE LE PEU as a true soldier/Legionannaire of France and Vichy Amerika.
Of all the claims that Iran made last week about its nuclear program, a one-sentence assertion by its president has provoked such surprise and concern among international nuclear inspectors they are planning to confront Tehran about it this week.
The assertion involves Iran's claim that even while it begins to enrich small amounts of uranium, it is pursuing a far more sophisticated way of making atomic fuel that American officials and inspectors say could speed Iran's path to developing a nuclear weapon.
Iran has consistently maintained that it abandoned work on this advanced technology, called the P-2 centrifuge, three years ago. Western analysts long suspected that Iran had a second, secret program based on the black market offerings of the renegade Pakistani nuclear engineer Abdul Qadeer Khan separate from the activity at its main nuclear facility at Natanz. But they had no proof.
Then on Thursday, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that Tehran was "presently conducting research" on the P-2 centrifuge, boasting that it would quadruple Iran's enrichment powers. The centrifuges are tall, thin machines that spin very fast to enrich, or concentrate, uranium's rare component, uranium 235, which can fuel nuclear reactors or atom bombs.
Mr. Ahmadinejad's statements, and those of other senior Iranian officials, are always viewed with suspicion by American and international nuclear experts, because Iran has, at various times, understated nuclear activities that were later discovered, and overstated its capabilities. Analysts and American intelligence officials, bruised by their experience in Iraq, say they are uncertain whether Mr. Ahmadinejad's claim represents a real technical advance that could accelerate Iran's nuclear agenda, or political rhetoric meant to convince the world of the unstoppability of its atomic program.
European diplomats said a delegation of Iranian officials is due to arrive on Tuesday in Vienna, where the International Atomic Energy Agency will press them to address the new enrichment claim, as well as other questions about Iran's program, including a crude bomb design found in the country.
"This is a much better machine," a European diplomat said of the advanced centrifuge, which was a centerpiece of Pakistan's efforts to build its nuclear weapons and was found in 2004 in Libya, when that country gave up its nuclear program. The diplomat added that the Iranians, among other questions, will now have to explain whether Mr. Ahmadinejad was right, and if so, whether they recently restarted the abandoned program or have been pursuing it in secret for years.
If Iran moved beyond research and actually began running the machines, it could force American intelligence agencies to revise their estimates of how long it would take for Iran to build an atom bomb an event they now put somewhere between 2010 and 2015.
Robert Joseph, the Bush administration's under secretary of state for arms control and international security, who is known as one of the administration's hawks, said in an interview on Saturday that President Ahmadinejad's claim constituted "the first time I've ever heard the Iranians admit" to have a significant effort on the advanced technology. Iran, Mr. Joseph added, "has never come clean on this program, and now its president is talking about it."
The new claim focuses renewed attention on Iran's rocky relationship with Mr. Khan, who provided it with much of the enrichment technology it is exploiting today. If Mr. Ahmadinejad's claim is correct, it probably indicates that relationship went on longer and far deeper than previously acknowledged. Mr. Khan and his nuclear black market supplied Iran with blueprints for both the more elementary machine, known as P-1, and the more advanced P-2.
There are other indications that Mr. Khan may have been dealing with Iran as recently as six years ago. President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan disclosed recently that he fired Dr. Khan, a national hero credited with developing Pakistan's bomb, in 2001 after discovering that he was trying to arrange a secret flight to the Iranian city of Zahedan, known as a center of smuggling.
Dr. Khan refused to discuss the flight, saying it was important and very secret. "I said, 'What the hell do you mean? You want to keep a secret from me?' " Mr. Musharraf recalled in an interview with The New York Times for a Discovery Times television documentary, "Nuclear Jihad."
"So these are the things which led me to very concrete suspicions," Mr. Musharraf said, "and we removed him."
Last year, Pakistan said its investigation into the Khan network was closed. But the Iranian crisis has led to renewed questioning of Dr. Khan, American intelligence officials and European diplomats say.
So far his answers have been vague, investigators say. Iran, for its part, has said virtually nothing about its P-2 program. The International Institute for Strategic Studies, an arms analysis group in London, said in a report last year that Iran's failure to provide more information about its P-2 program led many analysts to suspect that the advanced centrifuges formed "the nucleus of a secret enrichment program."
David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, a private research group in Washington that monitors the Iranian program, said Mr. Ahmadinejad's declaration, whether political rhetoric or technical reality, now gave the world "something to further investigate and worry about."
Tehran says its nuclear program is entirely peaceful and meant for producing nuclear power.
But the Bush administration argues otherwise. "A. Q. Khan was not in the business of civil nuclear power development," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in an interview for the documentary. "Why, if you only intended a civil nuclear program, would you have lied about activities at Natanz?" Later she added, "Why are they still unwilling to answer some of the questions that the I.A.E.A. has?"
The P-2 mystery began years ago when Iran told international inspectors that it had received plans for the advanced centrifuges around 1994 but had done nothing with them until 2002, when it hired an Iranian contractor to try to make the complex machines.
The P-2, a second-generation Pakistani model, was the most advanced centrifuge sold by Dr. Khan's network. With superstrong rotors, it could spin faster and enrich uranium faster.
Iran repeatedly denied receiving any P-2 centrifuges from Dr. Khan, which would greatly ease the making of duplicates. Moreover, it said it did no research on the production of the advanced centrifuges between 1995 and 2002 because of management changes in its nuclear program and a lack of skilled personnel.
In report after report, the I.A.E.A. has questioned that explanation. For instance, last September it said the Iranian contractor, who allegedly first saw the P-2 plans in 2002, made considerable research progress "within a short period," which seemed to undermine Iran's claim of doing no past research.
Iran said that the research failed to produce operating machines and that it ended the experimental P-2 work in 2003 and instead focused on the easier P-1 design.
But scraps of evidence gathered by the international agency and the accounts of some members of the Khan network have cast doubt on those denials. As recently as last Thursday, when the director general of the agency, Mohammed ElBaradei, visited Tehran, he insisted on detailed answers during a private meeting, diplomats briefed on the meeting said.
Suspicions arose because inspectors knew that Dr. Khan had supplied Libya and North Korea with actual P-2 centrifuges in the late 1990's, and they repeatedly heard that he had done likewise with Iran.
B. S. A. Tahir, the chief operating officer of the Khan network, now in prison in Malaysia, has reportedly said that Iran received far more P-2 technology than it has admitted and that some shipments took place after Dr. Khan and the Iranians supposedly ceased doing business around 1995.
Speaking to reporters in Washington on Thursday, just hours after Mr. Ahmadinejad's claim, senior intelligence officials said they had seen nothing yet that would lead them to revise their estimate that Iran is still five to 10 years away from making a weapon.
Kenneth C. Brill, the director of the National Counterproliferation Center, created to track programs like Iran's and North Korea's, cautioned against accepting at face value Tehran's recent claims about producing enriched uranium and plans to produce 54,000 centrifuges.
"It will take many years," he said, "to build that many."
At the same time, intelligence reports circulating inside the American government, according to several officials who were granted anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information, have raised questions of whether the Iranian government's decision to boast about its progress is part of an effort to hide more significant activity.
They suspect that a clandestine program, if it exists, would concentrate on the P-2 because it can produce enriched uranium so fast.
I.A.E.A. officials say solving the mystery of the P-2 shipments has become one of the most critical issues on which they need answers in the next two weeks, before Mr. ElBaradei issues a report to the United Nations Security Council on April 28.
Other pressing questions include Iran's reluctance to discuss a document found by inspectors one that the Iranians were not willing to let the inspectors take out of the country that sketches out how to shape uranium into perfect spheres, the tell-tale shape for a primitive weapon. Investigators say that document, too, appears to have come from the Khan network.
It is also unclear whether Dr. Khan sold the Iranians a complete Chinese-made bomb design similar to the one Libya turned over to the United States when it gave up its weapons program. Questions about other copies of the bomb design have been met with silence, in Iran and in Pakistan.
"Frankly, I don't know whether he has passed these bomb designs to others," Mr. Musharraf said. Even under a loose form of house arrest for the past two years, he said, Dr. Khan "sometimes has been hiding the facts."
#2
AQ Khan is not a nuclear engineer or physicist.
He is a metallurgist.
The Chinese provided the ring magnets for the P2 centrifuges.
The centrifuges themselves are originally of European design. AQ Khan stole the designs when he worked at URENCO.
The proliferation was not one way - it would seem that Pakistan provided the Chinese with the advanced URENCO designs, the Chinese may have made modifications (to allow easier fabrication) and provided technical assitance to Pakistan to actually allow them to make the centrifuge cascades.
China also provided the design blueprints and detailed manufacturing notes for CHICOM 4 - the weapon tested during the 4th Chinese nuclear test - a 500 kg, <0.8 m diameter HEU device that can be easily mated to a ballistic missile.
Pakistan then proliferated this design to North Korea, to obtain ballistic missiles from them.
Subsequent proliferation seesm to have been motivated by islamist ideology - a desire to have several muslim countries as nuclear weapon states.
AQ Khan, who was born in Bhopal, India, belongs to a generation (on both sides of the border) traumatized by the massacres of partition. A desire for revenge and for muslim domination drove him during the years he headed Pakistan's weapons program.
Perv is no different. He will not hand Khan over.
He also knows too much .. AQ Khan was not an independent operator - it was the Pakistani state that proliferated.
Posted by: john ||
04/17/2006 9:50 Comments ||
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#3
No, we need him in the custody of a friendly less 'human-rights' restrained country... ;-)
Posted by: DanNY ||
04/17/2006 9:50 Comments ||
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#4
AQ Khan will probably die of a "heart attack" soon.
Dead men tell no tales
Posted by: john ||
04/17/2006 9:55 Comments ||
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#5
John, glad you pointed out where the technology originates. Russia and China. The rest of the sleazy bastards spread it around. Iran, though, is different. They have a very high number of scientists trained in the west, both US and Europe, very capable now of furthering designs. They will produce weapons, just as India was able to do before them. The porblem is, they may use them.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/17/2006 00:00 ||
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#1
Giggle. Gen Barbara Ferguson, Arab News, is apparently incapable of understanding that a modern military has regularly updated war plans for almost every contingency, and most certainly for a country which has been a belligerent since 1979 and a major terror enabler. Gen Barbie should post her stories from retirement, along with the other fools. That's how this sort of peanut gallery babble is done.
#2
It's just a roundup of the stupidest off the wall shit said recently by completely out of the loop or ex or former whatever types that she could find. Perfect for the Arab News crowd. I thought it was quite funny. :)
#3
Interestingly enough, a quick Google does not seem to reveal any General Barbara Ferguson, but does reveal a 'Renaissance Woman' by that name who wrote an article about Easter with the Marines in 2003:
http://www.rwnetwork.net/Barbara_Ferguson
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
04/17/2006 6:14 Comments ||
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#4
Here's a REAL story on what we will probably do by a REAL General and it would not be to invade (twits) or use nukes (morons), as the silly gossip in this piece repeated from that passle of losers.
#5
When the United States formalized its war plans in the early 20th Century, potential foes were coded by color. Japan became Orange, Germany was Black, and Britain was noted as Red. British dominions also drew shades of Red: Canada was Crimson, New Zealand was Garnet, India was Ruby and Australia was Scarlet. I'm sure there are lots of 'plans' out there which will never see the light of day. Idle staff officers have to be kept busy to make sure the force managment people don't cut personnel slots in organizations.
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/17/2006 10:08 Comments ||
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#7
We have plans for just about everything. It would actually be news if we didn't have plans for everything and were just reacting instead of being pro-active.
#8
I really hate the idea of "setting their nuclear program back five years". It is just idiocy. It accomplishes *nothing*. What kind of mindset thinks up something like that? Somebody who can't plan past next Tuesday? And what happens in five years? We do it again, like with Iraq?
That is why I am such an advocate of partitioning Iran. My argument is that the Iranian *people* want a bomb. So *any* government they get is *also* going to want a bomb. Ergo, the *only* way to keep them from getting a bomb is to carve them up in such a way that they *cannot*, no way, no how, get a bomb unless someone gives them a fully functional bomb.
There is no real argument against partitioning.
To do it, we must annihilate the Iranian army and Revolutionary Guard. Without them, we can cut up their country in the logical way, and the pieces all will have new owners more proper to the people who live there.
This is no great trauma to the Persian people, who live in what will remain--Persia. But they will no longer have the resources to build a nuclear weapon. Not in 5 years, or 10, or 50.
The few Persians who live in Iranian Kurdistan, Baluchistan, the Iranian Azeri lands, and the Iranian Arab lands can go back to Persia and leave the hated and despised minorities to rule over their own lands for a change.
Invading Canada won't be like invading Iraq: When we invade Canada, nobody will be able to grumble that we didn't have a plan.
The United States government does have a plan to invade Canada. It's a 94-page document called "Joint Army and Navy Basic War Plan -- Red," with the word SECRET stamped on the cover. It's a bold plan, a bodacious plan, a step-by-step plan to invade, seize and annex our neighbor to the north. It goes like this:
Canadian Mounties
Any invasion of Canada by U.S. forces shouldn't underestimate the legendary Royal Canadian Mounted Police. (Patterson Clark -- The Washington Post)
Also In Style
* Hot Under the Collar
* Reporters In Glass Houses
* Bourgeois in Baltimore: Forty Uneasy Pieces
* Stevenson's 'Treasure Island': Still Avast Delight
* Left Bank Quartet Gets Plenty of Bang for Its Bartok
* Style Section
First, we send a joint Army-Navy overseas force to capture the port city of Halifax, cutting the Canadians off from their British allies.
Then we seize Canadian power plants near Niagara Falls, so they freeze in the dark.
Then the U.S. Army invades on three fronts -- marching from Vermont to take Montreal and Quebec, charging out of North Dakota to grab the railroad center at Winnipeg, and storming out of the Midwest to capture the strategic nickel mines of Ontario.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Navy seizes the Great Lakes and blockades Canada's Atlantic and Pacific ports.
...
It sounds like a joke but it's not. War Plan Red is real. It was drawn up and approved by the War Department in 1930, then updated in 1934 and 1935. It was declassified in 1974 and the word "SECRET" crossed out with a heavy pencil. Now it sits in a little gray box in the National Archives in College Park, available to anybody, even Canadian spies. They can photocopy it for 15 cents a page.
Its our JOB to be ready and have a plan for EVERYTHING, even the fairly unreasonable. So why is everyon eacting surprised that we have plans for an invasion of Iran? Probably had an OPLAN for that updated yearly since 1979.
Aside fromthat, we will not invade Iran. Anythign sent on them is pre-emptive of their acquiring nuclear weaponry and punative for continuing to be a rogue nation run by a fundamentalist fanatic who sees hiw role as being the one who brings the Muslim Messiah by making war.
#12
* Hot Under the Collar
* Reporters In Glass Houses
* Bourgeois in Baltimore: Forty Uneasy Pieces
* Stevenson's 'Treasure Island': Still Avast Delight
* Left Bank Quartet Gets Plenty of Bang for Its Bartok
* Style Section
War Plan RED: Invasion Canada
UPDATE:
Just back from reconnoitering Victoria Island OldSpook.
Was mooned by the locals on a regular basis, please advise alternate contingencies.
Posted by: Red Dog ||
04/17/2006 14:46 Comments ||
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#13
I can live with setting Iranian plans back five years, Anonymoose. That's about what Israel did to Iraq's Osiraq nuclear plant, and then events intervened to keep Saddam Hussein's plans off-track. The key is to give the world breathing room while a permanent fix is put in place, and to get the attention of the many others with nuclear intentions. "Let not the Best be the enemy of the Good," after all.
Fifteen cents a page to make copies, Old Spook? My goodness.
Red Dog, you might consider getting a pair or two of those clever undershorts from Kmart, the ones with the tongue sticking out, and share the friendly expression with your Canadian hosts -- to show your appreciation. In the meantime, why don't you sit down next to me, and have a nice cup of tea and a piece of honey cake. And for those who'd care to join us, the honey cake and macaroons are on the table, and something a bit stronger is on the sideboard for those who don't appreciate tea properly. :-)
#14
Divisonal Field Exercises are over. The friendly seizure of Memphis is only ___ days away. Thence to Line Wrigley for a ____ pause until the assault on Madison.
#17
Red Dog, you might consider getting a pair or two of those clever undershorts from Kmart, the ones with the tongue sticking out, and share the friendly expression with your Canadian hosts -- to show your appreciation. In the meantime, why don't you sit down next to me, and have a nice cup of tea and a piece of honey cake. And for those who'd care to join us, the honey cake and macaroons are on the table, and something a bit stronger is on the sideboard for those who don't appreciate tea properly.
I'm so there TW!! Love the tea btw and the honey cake is very sweety of you!! :-)
New satellite imagery indicate Iran has expanded its uranium conversion site at Isfahan and reinforced its Natanz underground uranium enrichment plant against possible military strikes, a U.S. think tank said. The U.N. Security Council, which could consider sanctions on Iran, has called on Tehran to halt enrichment activity and asked U.N. nuclear watchdog chief Mohamed ElBaradei to report on the Iranian response on April 28. But Iran has accelerated nuclear work and stood its ground during a visit by ElBaradei last week.
The Institute for Science and International Security said in an email sent to news media with attached commercial satellite photos that Iran has built a new tunnel entrance at Isfahan, where uranium is processed into a feed material for enrichment. There had been just two entry points in February, it said. "This new entrance is indicative of a new underground facility or further expansion of the existing one," said ISIS, led by ex-U.N. arms inspector and nuclear expert David Albright.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/17/2006 00:00 ||
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#1
I hope Haliburton Seismic Division is priming their gear.
#2
America will see what happens this summer - Iran has threatened to initiate massive terror strikes against America and the WEst regardless of whether attacked by Israel or America, separately or in collusion. Its useless for America-Allies to attack Iran without inducing "regime change', and everyone knows it. NORTH KOREA = NK-TAIWAN = IRAN-TAIWAN, etc. scenarios is still there on the other side of the world.
#3
I wonder if Saddam played a role in helping Iran achieve uranium enrichment. I remember hearing a couple years back that it was higly probable that Saddam moved all his equipment into Iran just before the war. But of course this is only speculation.
The latest news leak, regarding National Security Agency (NSA) communications intelligence activities, with the cooperation of AT&T, has not only given al Qaeda an edge, it places civilians at risk in more ways than one. The telecommunications giant AT&T is now in the midst of a court battle due to the claims of a "whistleblower" who claims that the company cooperated with NSA eavesdropping on suspected terrorists. A ruling is pending on whether certain documents provided to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, via a former AT&T employee, that are currently under seal, will be released. Wiretap Whistleblower's Statement Rest at link.
Posted by: ed ||
04/17/2006 10:29 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Rebel groups in Chad have denied allegations that they are receiving support from neighbouring Sudan. The United Front for Change, a loose grouping of eight rebel groups, has released a statement denying Chadian Government claims that it is being funded by neighbouring Sudan. The statement says that the movement is part of a popular uprising against the Government and is independent of all overseas countries. 
The President of Sudan has denied supporting rebels who are trying to topple the President in neighbouring Chad. Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir says Sudan has no interest in political instability in Chad. He says Sudan remains committed to a deal brokered earlier this year to ease tension along the border between the two countries.
Egyptian Public Prosecution said on Sunday that a person held on charges of attacking three churches in Alexandria had committed the crime alone. The prosecution said in a statement that Mamoud Salah Abdulrazzaq who was recognized by witnesses, committed the crime alone and used two knives in the assault. It added that 26 witnesses were questioned and that it would ask the security guards of the churches to give their testimony later.Meanwhile, a second Egyptian citizen died earlier today of injuries he sustained in yesterday's violence in the city of Alexandria.
An Italian Catholic magazine has published a satirical cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad (
Turkish Prime Minister 
JERUSALEM (AP) - Israel has proposed freeing a leader of the Palestinian uprising if the United States releases 
President Pervez Musharraf assured foreign investors on Monday night that the April 11 Nishtar Park suicide bombing was a sectarian attack, implying that the carnage in which over 50 people were killed, had no links with the present-day wave of terrorism that has been sweeping the world since 9/11.
Pakistan has strongly denied rumours about employing American guards to safeguard Pakistani nuclear installations stating there is no need for that.
BHOPAL: Police arrested two women in central India on Easter Sunday for allegedly violating state laws on the preaching of Christianity, police said. "The women were distributing pamphlets telling people how they may overcome their problems by following the Bible," said D Srinivas Rao, police chief of Jabalpur district in Madhya Pradesh state. 
Pakistan does not need any Sipah, Jaish or Lashkar because the Pakistan Army is the sole Sipah or Lashkar of this country, said President General Pervez Musharraf while talking to Islamic scholars at the Governors House here on Sunday.
BAGHDAD - Iraqs Shia Alliance on Sunday appeared close to reaching a deal to replace Ibrahim Al Jaafari as its nominee for prime minister, which could break a deadlock on a new government, officials in the bloc said.
In Jerusalem, at the same time, six human rights groups sought a High Court injunction to mute the effectiveness of the IDFs artillery bombardments against Palestinian missile sites for fear of endangering Palestinian civilians. These groups have never pursued court action against the daily Palestinian bombardments which single out Israeli civilian locations.
GAZA: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has offered to hand control of the Gaza Strip's border with Egypt to the new government led by the militant group Hamas, officials said on Sunday. Last Tuesday, special forces loyal to Abbas assumed control of the crossing, a move that heightened tensions between the president and Hamas, which took office on March 29. "The discussions are still going on. Until now Hamas has not responded to the offer," said an aide to Abbas. An official from Abbas's Fatah movement in Gaza said the president had sent a letter to Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh which said border control would pass to Hamas. The official did not give a timeframe. "The Hamas government will be held responsible if the crossing is blocked by Israel or if the European monitors take a decision to withdraw," the official said.
New satellite imagery indicate Iran has expanded its uranium conversion site at Isfahan and reinforced its Natanz underground uranium enrichment plant against possible military strikes, a U.S. think tank said. The U.N. Security Council, which could consider sanctions on Iran, has called on Tehran to halt enrichment activity and asked U.N. nuclear watchdog chief Mohamed ElBaradei to report on the Iranian response on April 28. But Iran has accelerated nuclear work and stood its ground during a visit by ElBaradei last week.
