KABUL, Afghanistan, May 27 Afghanistan's Parliament on Saturday rejected the president's nominee for chief of the Supreme Court, Fazel Hadi Shinwari, a conservative cleric and close ally of President Hamid Karzai. Lawmakers voted 117 to 77 against Mr. Shinwari, who has held the post of chief justice since shortly after the Taliban leadership collapsed in 2001 and has been widely criticized for an inefficient and corrupt judicial system.
The rejection of Mr. Shinwari will be a blow to Mr. Karzai, who had hoped to retain the cleric for his unimpeachable religious standing while appointing new, better qualified judges under him to ensure reform. "He was acceptable to different sections of our community, and even to the Taliban, so he was good for defending the Afghan government against Taliban claims that it is an infidel government and one based on Western democracy," said Malalai Shinwary, a member of Parliament from Kabul, who comes from the same tribe as Mr. Shinwari.
Incompetent and acceptable to the Taliban? Don't need a third reason. Good going, Parliament.
Three more of Mr. Karzai's nominees for the nine-member Supreme Court have also been rejected along with Mr. Shinwari, and only two have been confirmed, in a clear message of Parliament's dissatisfaction with the state of the judiciary. Another three nominees, who hold degrees from Western universities, were also rejected because they hold dual citizenship, though some legislators called Saturday for their nominations to be reconsidered.
Yet the Parliament, which largely supported Mr. Karzai's choice of cabinet ministers, voted against Mr. Shinwari largely because of his fundamentalist views, another legislator, Shukria Barakzai, said. "It was a battle between fundamentalists and intellectuals," she said.
Stated another way, a battle between the jihadis and the reasonable.
"Corruption in the judicial system is shameful," she said. "Bribery, the long wait people have to make for their cases to be finalized, and the failure to bring criminals to justice are all things we hear about in the media and from our constituents."
There was also unhappiness that Mr. Shinwari, who is believed to be in his 70's, has only a religious education, and no certificate of higher education, a requirement under the Afghan constitution, she said.
Doesn't need to be educated to rule on religious law, does he? Only matters how holy he is.
Posted by: Steve White ||
05/27/2006 13:01 ||
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Excellent decision and for all the right reasons.
#2
TW: Excellent decision and for all the right reasons.
It depends. If Afghan legislators are voting in accordance with the views of their constituents, that's a good thing. If not, this could lead to a backlash. The Shah forced the pace of Iran's modernization. The ensuing grass roots backlash led to the 1979 revolution.
NATOs supreme commander said Thursday a spring offensive by Taliban fighters appears aimed at discouraging US allies taking part in an expanded NATO-led force in southern Afghanistan.
Really? Do tell. We'd never have guessed that.
General Jim Jones predicted, however, that the NATO troops will be able to quickly bring the region under control once they complete their move into the south by July. He said the deployment of British, Canadian, Dutch, Romanian and US troops under the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force will put more military forces into the region than have been there until now, he said.
They're gonna have to do more than fire warning shots at the bad guyz. This isn't peacekeeping. It's pacification, and it's complicated by the presence of the Pak safe areas.
The ratio will be very favorable to our side, and ... very quickly we will establish order in parts of the country that have not known that, he said in a question-and-answer session at the National Press Club. Jones said levels of violence were up but he tied that to the movement of Afghan and coalition forces into new areas and Taliban moves against the NATO expansion. Some people say it is active, it is message sending, a strategic move, a way to discourage and intimidate countries that are thinking of sending troops there, to get the political discussion going, said the general, who also leads the US European command. I think well have to wait and see, he said.
I don't think that would be a good idea, which is probably why nobody ever made me a general. I think to make headway you've got to aggressively carry the fight to the enemy: grab him by the nose and kick his ass. And then when he runs back to Waziristan or Bajaur, you've got to follow him and burn his house down, even if you have to do it using aircraft or missiles.
Jones said he was more concerned in the long term over the outcome of the war on drugs in Afghanistan than a resurgent Taliban.
He's making the assumption, possibly for public consumption, that the two aren't tied tightly together...
With narcotics accounting for about half the countrys gross domestic product, the drug trade bleeds into the system of law and order, the police system, the corruption, and the like.
Meanwhile, a provincial governor citing Afghan intelligence said that an upsurge in violence over the past week was the result of pressure on the Taliban from Al-Qaeda and other supporters. This included Al-Qaeda and other militants based in neighbouring Pakistan, said Asadullah Khalid, governor of Kandahar province, which has seen the bulk of the unrest. Al-Qaeda and certain countries were pressuring the Taliban to capture some ground, particularly in Kandahar, to claim their active presence, the governor said, citing Afghan intelligence presented to him. The latest violence was more than the insurgency, Khalid said.
Khalid said intelligence reports showed that senior Taliban leaders were living and training recruits in Pakistan, notably in the city of Quetta about 100 kilometres from the border and opposite Kandahar. I can tell you that their leadership body has been destroyed, at least in Kandahar, he said. Khalid admitted he did not have sufficient government forces to crack down on rebels. About police being weak, yeah. Youre talking about good police, Im telling you even we dont have enough bad police, he said.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/27/2006 00:00 ||
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if ($Recent_Taliwhacker_offensive == $best_effort){
$state_of_Taliwhacker_forces = "up sh** creek"}
else
$state_of_Taliwhacker_forces = "Oscar nomination for best portrayal of forces up sh** creek}
#2
Pakistan is cedeing control of their border to the Taliban assholes. We need to make it a no-man's land - bombs away
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/27/2006 0:26 Comments ||
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Articles like this make me afraid that psychologically our allies are bringing a knife to a gunfight: they see this as a peacekeeping mission and the Taliban sees it as holy war. But then again, the Lions of Islam are big subscribers to the proposition that discretion is the better part of valor.
Posted by: Matt ||
05/27/2006 10:32 Comments ||
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psychologically our allies are bringing a knife to a gunfight
They've been in that mode for the last 50 years. Getting mugged will help snap them out of it.
#5
The British brought cannons to a gunfight and the Russians brought jet fighters to a gunfight and couldn't hold the place. WE ain't gonna hold the place. AFGHANS are gonna hold it. But it's gonna take some patience and it's gonna take the better part of a quarter century.
A baby with its leg blown off by shrapnel. Corpses in the streets. The wounded writhing in pain inside wheelbarrows, the only ambulances around.
Horrible memories have followed those who fled the war-ravaged Somali capital, Mogadishu, this week for the relative safety of this town about 50 miles down the coast. At night, the evacuees still dream of the artillery shells that exploded around them. They cannot get the rat-a-tat of automatic weapon fire out of their heads.
"When you witness a 1-year-old whose leg has been cut off by a mortar shell, it stays with you," said Halima Ahmed, 50, who left Mogadishu two days ago with her 85-year-old mother in a donkey cart. "We've witnessed so many things."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
05/27/2006 01:20 ||
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I know this is hideous, but for some reason, I just can't get up any sympathy for loons blowing up other loons. The only innocent are the children who aren't old enough to start spewing the Koran from memory.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
05/27/2006 16:34 Comments ||
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typical NY Times slant - the Islamist Court provides milk and honey and Islamic schools for the babies and children. The U.S. seeks to stop this progress. Noney comes from "foreign countries" but the U.S. is the only one named? What? The bartender didn't name the others?
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/27/2006 16:44 Comments ||
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Two things the New York Times, like most of the Left, values:
It's calm, it's on edge, it's seething, who can tell?
Rival gunmen stalked the streets of the lawless Somali capital yesterday, girding for fresh fighting after sporadic overnight clashes and a day of bloody battles left dozens dead, witnesses said. Ignoring appeals for a truce, forces loyal to Mogadishu's Islamic courts and a US-backed warlord alliance dug in across the city as thousands of terrified residents fled their homes unsure of where to find safety, witnesses said. With the two sides reinforcing positions in four residential neighbourhoods where at least 30 people were killed and 72 wounded in fierce fighting on Thursday, residents said they were certain new clashes would erupt.
With no truce signed despite increasingly desperate calls from the international community and locals, elders continued to shuttle between the rival camps to press for a ceasefire. Yet there was little confidence the lull would last and columns of frightened civilians poured out of residential districts in southern and northern Magodishu, witnesses said. "There were large movements of militiamen overnight," said Mumi Ibrahim, a resident of the southern K4 neighbourhood, where the most intense clashes took place. "They are preparing for another round. "If they don't start fighting today, they will start tomorrow, but definitely there is no peace at the moment," he told AFP.
"People are very much disturbed," said K4 resident Abdullahi Hassan Osoble. "They are fleeing from one place to another, unable to know which is safer. The most affected are those from children and the elderly." Another K4 resident, Ismaic Haji Roble, said the two sides had spent the night lobbing shells at each other and trading bursts of gunfire in K4 but there were no immediate reports of casualties. "Mortar shelling and sporadic gunfire have been going on in K4 overnight," he said. Tension was also high in the southern Daynile neighbourhood and the Galgalato and Sisi areas in north Mogadishu, all of which were battlegrounds 24 hours earlier, residents said.
Thursday's clashes erupted after a tense weeklong lull in fighting that began in Sisi on May 7, killing more than 140 people over the following eight days before the two sides began observing a tenuous unsigned ceasefire. Those clashes, the third major battle between the Islamists and the warlords since February, brought the death toll to more than 240 in the deadliest violence Mogadishu has seen since Somalia collapsed into anarchy in 1991.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
05/27/2006 01:13 ||
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The Home Office is looking into reports that hundreds of foreign offenders have been freed from secure hospitals with no consideration given to deportation. The Sun says police are seeking up to 500 former mental patients, including murderers, rapists and paedophiles.
Any clue yet amongst the staffers at the Home Office? No? Pity.
The Home Office said Home Secretary John Reid had ordered officials to identify exactly how many foreigners had passed through UK secure hospitals. Police are still seeking some of more than 1,019 foreigners freed from jail.
Updating MPs on the foreign prisoner crisis earlier this week, Mr Reid admitted no information on the nationality of offenders in mental institutions had been collected and none had been considered for deportation or even referred to the Immigration and Nationality Directorate.
The three secure hospitals in England where mentally-ill prisoners are held are at Broadmoor in Berkshire, Rampton in Nottinghamshire and Ashworth on Merseyside.
A cousin of ousted Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein is living in Sweden where his applications for asylum have been rejected, reported Expressen on Saturday.
The man, a former air force general in his 50s, had been living outside Stockholm with his family for two years.
The security police, Säpo, believe the man is a threat to security and has been involved in war crimes in Iraq, although this was denied by his legal representative Kati Lo Forte, said Expressen.
Immigration ministry spokeswoman Barbro Holmberg told AFP she could make no comment on the report.
Lo Forte was quoted as saying that the unidentified man "feared persecution" if he returned to Iraq because of his "political convictions and membership of a certain social group".
Swedish police told AFP in November that about 10 former senior officials under the Saddam regime were in Sweden where they had demanded asylum.
The ex-officials were also being investigated for alleged crimes against humanity, police said.
#1
In that Berlesconi is a media king, I hope he directs his media to interview the heck out of these soldiers. This will serve the double function of restoring much of Italy's military pride and it will also be one in the eye to Prodi.
#3
Regardless, Grazie for your contribution to the establishment of another democracy where there once was none. Grazie for hanging in there when others found it easier not to try or to 'bug out'. Grazie for having one damn brave citizen who spat at the animals with the cry "I'll show you how an Italian dies!".
John Kerry starts by showing the entry in a log he kept from 1969: "Feb 12: 0800 run to Cambodia."
He moves on to the photographs: his boat leaving the base at Ha Tien, Vietnam; the harbor; the mountains fading frame by frame as the boat heads north; the special operations team the boat was ferrying across the border; the men reading maps and setting off flares.
"They gave me a hat," Mr. Kerry says. "I have the hat to this day," he declares, rising to pull it from his briefcase. "I have the hat." NOT "The Lucky Hat"???
Three decades after the Vietnam War and nearly two years after Mr. Kerry's failed presidential bid, most Americans have probably forgotten why it ever mattered whether he went to Cambodia or that the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth accused him of making it all up, saying he was dishonest and lacked patriotism. Because he still stonewalls releasing his Mil records..to this very day
But among those who were on the front lines of the 2004 campaign, the battle over Mr. Kerry's wartime service continues, out of the limelight but in some ways more heatedly because unlike then, Mr. Kerry has fully engaged in the fight. Only those on Mr. Kerry's side, however, have gathered new evidence to support their case. easy to do when you refuse to release your own information.
The Swift boat group continues to spend money on Washington consultants, according to public records, and last fall it gave $100,000 to a group that promptly sued Mr. Kerry, a Democratic senator from Massachusetts, for allegedly interfering with the release of a film that was critical of him. Terayza! They're making a fool of me!
Some of the principals behind the Swift boat group continue to press their claims. John O'Neill, the co-author of the group's best-selling manifesto, "Unfit for Command," criticizes Mr. Kerry on television talk shows and solicits money for conservative causes and candidates. In a South Carolina newspaper, William Schachte recently reprised his allegation that he was aboard the small skimmer where Mr. Kerry received the injury that led to his first Purple Heart, and that Mr. Kerry actually wounded himself.
Swift boat message boards and anti-Kerry Web sites still boil with accusations that Mr. Kerry fabricated the military reports that led to his military decorations.
Mr. Kerry, accused even by Democrats of failing to respond to the charges during the campaign, is now fighting back hard. sure he is...release the records! Prove they were lying!
"They lied and lied and lied about everything," Mr. Kerry says in an interview in his Senate office. "How many lies do you get to tell before someone calls you a liar? How many times can you be exposed in America today?" Dunno - you tell us...we lost count
His supporters are compiling a dossier that they say will expose every one of the Swift boat group's charges as a lie and put to rest any question about Mr. Kerry's valor in combat. While it would be easy to see this as part of Mr. Kerry's exploration of another presidential run, his friends say the Swift boat charges struck at an experience so central to his identity that he would want to correct the record even if he were retiring from public life. rriiigghhtt
Mr. Kerry portrays himself as a wary participant in his own defense, insisting in the two-hour interview that he does not want to dwell on the accusations or the mistakes of his 2004 campaign. "I'm moving on," he says several times.
But he can also barely resist prosecuting a case against the group that his friends now refer to as "the bad guys." "Bill Schachte was not on that skimmer," Mr. Kerry says firmly. "He was not on that skimmer. It is a lie to suggest that he was out there on that skimmer."
He shows a photograph of the skimmer being towed behind his Swift boat, insisting that it could barely fit three people, himself and two others.
"The three guys who in fact were in the boat all say he wasn't there and will tell you he wasn't there. We know he wasn't there, and we have all kinds of ways of proving it."
Mr. Kerry has signed forms authorizing the Navy to release his record something he resisted during the campaign and hired a researcher to comb the naval archives in Washington for records that could pinpoint his whereabouts during dates of the incidents in dispute. Another former crew member has spent days at a time interviewing veterans to reconstruct every incident in question. He will not release them all publicly
In February 2005, Mr. Kerry's supporters formed their own group, the Patriot Project, to defend veterans who take unpopular positions, particularly against the Iraq war. One of their first tasks was to visit newspaper editorial boards in defense of John P. Murtha, a Pennsylvania Democrat and veteran whose military record has been attacked by Republicans and conservative blogs since he called for pulling the troops out of Iraq.
The group has sent a letter to Mr. Schachte calling for a meeting with him, Mr. Kerry and two former veterans who maintain as they did publicly during the campaign that they were the only other people on the skimmer with Mr. Kerry and that he was wounded in a hail of enemy fire.
Members of the Swift boat group have not seen Mr. Kerry's newly gathered evidence. But they seem unwilling to cede much.
Mr. O'Neill said he "would be thrilled to look at anything he wants to send." Still, he added, "I'm sorry he never apologized for his 1971 speech," referring to Mr. Kerry's testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in which he told other soldiers' accounts of ravaging Vietnamese villages and citizens. "I think it would have been a very positive thing to do in terms of the many thousands of people who survived Vietnam and felt that was very hurtful."
Mr. Schachte said that he held "no animus," but that "if they crank this thing up again, I'm not going to be quiet." One of the two men who say they were on the boat he does not recall which might have been there, Mr. Schachte said, "but I was in that boat with Kerry." Not gonna be intimidated for "Kerry '08!"? Huh?
The veterans group, led by Mr. O'Neill, a former Swift boat commander who was recruited by the Nixon administration to debate Mr. Kerry on "The Dick Cavett Show" in 1971, began its campaign in early 2004 by criticizing Mr. Kerry's protests against the Vietnam War. But backed by Republican donors and consultants, they soon shifted to attack his greatest strength his record as a military hero in a campaign against a president who never went to war.
Naval records and accounts from other sailors contradicted almost every claim they made, and some members of the group who had earlier praised Mr. Kerry's heroism contradicted themselves. slipped that lie in there pretty easily, didn't the NYT? hmmm? Christmas in Cambodia?
Still, the charges stuck. At a triumphant gathering of veterans in Fort Worth after the election, Mr. O'Neill was introduced as the man who "torpedoed" Mr. Kerry's campaign; the Swift boat group spent more than $130,000 for a "Mission Accomplished" celebration at Disney World. The president's brother, Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida, sent a letter thanking the "Swifties" for "their willingness to stand up to John Kerry." Even people within the Kerry campaign believed that the attacks had cost their candidate the presidency. along with his arrogant unlikeable brahmin personality
Some of Mr. Kerry's friends and former Swift boat crew members made advertisements during the race to try to shoot down the group's charges. But the campaign declined to air them widely because some strategists said that directly challenging the charges would legitimize them.
They approached Mr. Kerry after the election with the idea of setting the record straight.
So they have returned, for instance, to the question of Cambodia and whether Mr. Kerry was ever ordered to transport Navy Seals across the border, an experience that he said made him view government officials, who had declared that the country was not part of the war, as deceptive.
The Swift boat group insisted that no boats had gone to Cambodia. But Mr. Kerry's researcher, using Vietnam-era military maps and spot reports from the naval archives showing coordinates for his boat, traced his path from Ha Tien toward Cambodia on a mission that records say was to insert Navy Seals.
Mr. Kerry's supporters have also frozen frames from his amateur films of his time in Vietnam and have retrieved letters and military citations for other sailors to support his version of how he won the Silver Star rebutting the Swift boat group's most explosive charge, that he shot an unarmed teenager who was fleeing his fire.
Another photograph provides evidence for Mr. Kerry's version of how he won the Bronze Star. And original reports pulled from the naval archives contradict the charge that he drafted his own accounts of various incidents which left room, the Swift boat group had argued, to embellish them.
Mr. Kerry's defenders have received help from unlikely sources, including some who were originally aligned with the Swift boat group but later objected to its accusations against Mr. Kerry. One of them, Steve Hayes, was an early member of the group. A former sailor, he was a longtime friend and employee of William Franke, one of the group's founders, and he supported the push to have Mr. Kerry release his military files. But Mr. Hayes came to believe that the group was twisting Mr. Kerry's record.
"The mantra was just 'We want to set the record straight,' " Mr. Hayes said this month. "It became clear to me that it was morphing from an organization to set the record straight into a highly political vendetta. They knew it was not the truth."
Mr. Hayes broke with the group, ending a 35-year friendship with Mr. Franke, and voted for Mr. Kerry. He has provided a long interview to Mr. Kerry's supporters, backing their version of the incident for which Mr. Kerry received the Bronze Star.
Of course, plenty of disappointed and angry Democrats would like to know why Mr. Kerry did not defend himself so strenuously before the election. He had posted some military documents on his campaign's Web site and had allowed reporters to view his medical records but resisted open access to them as unnecessarily intrusive.
Mr. Kerry and his defenders say that they did not have the extensive archival material, and that it was too complicated to gather in the rapid pace of a campaign. He was caught off guard, he says; he had been prepared to defend his antiwar activism, but he did not believe that anyone would challenge the facts behind his military awards. "We should have put more money behind it," Mr. Kerry says now. "I take responsibility for it; it was my mistake. They spent something like $30 million, and we didn't. That's just a terrible imbalance when somebody's lying about you."
the overwhelming evidence available sez the Senator is a liar, and fabricator, and a fake. Release all your records, coward
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/27/2006 16:55 ||
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No mention of hunting for Marlon Brandon up along the Cambodian border? For me the biggest question was not his personality, or what happened in Viet Nam, but what exactly have you accomplished in the esuing 30 years?
Let me go out on a limb here - a very sturdy limb - and say Kerry '08 just ain't gonna happen. Not for more than 15 minutes, anyway.
#7
While it would be easy to see this as part of Mr. Kerry's exploration of another presidential run, his friends say the Swift boat charges struck at an experience so central to his identity that he would want to correct the record even if he were retiring from public life.
This I believe. True or false, this is central to how he identifies himself in his own mind. If he loses this, he loses himself. He cannot let it go, though he destroy his career and his reputation in the process.
#8
Agreed TW: If it were that easy he would've released (not just signed the releases...nice semantics) ALL his records. He's a poseur and a fake, and he's trying to set the public-spin Kerry straight(!) so the Private Kerry can sleep in cowardly denial.
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/27/2006 23:31 Comments ||
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Want to settle this John F. Kerry?
Release your entire set of records, including your original DD-214, the one PRIOR to the Carter pardon.
That isn't happening. Take your TRANZI ass and STFU Kerry.
#10
I respect you John Kerry for going to Viet Nam. A lot of dudes ran to Canada but yes John, you went to 'nam and therefore you have my respect and gratitude. That being said, I think you are a man given to puffery and you over embellished two of your three wounds to go home as early as possible. I also think your involvement with winter soldier was politically motivated and down right cowardly. You sir are a liar who aided and abetted other liars in order to stop a war you did not believe in by impuning the reputation of a generation of servicemen.
Luckily though karma's a bitch, which is why you're still the junior senator from Massachusetts. Therefore, would you please shut the hell up, you're like a broken record and no one cares anymore.
Recent disclosures of classified information by the press have damaged the national security, several Republican members of the House intelligence committee said today at a hearing on news organizations' legal responsibilities.
The criticism focused on articles in The New York Times concerning a National Security Agency surveillance program and, to a lesser extent, on disclosures in The Washington Post about secret C.I.A. prisons overseas.
Some Republicans on the committee advocated the criminal prosecution of The Times. Their comments partly echoed and partly amplified recent statements by Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales that the Justice Department has the authority to prosecute reporters for publishing classified information. "The press is not above the law, including laws regarding unauthorized disclosure and use of classified information," said Peter Hoekstra, Republican of Michigan, the chairman of the committee. But he added that he was "not yet willing" to advocate criminal prosecution of reporters or newspapers.
Some of his colleagues were less reticent. "I believe the attorney general and the president should use all of the power of existing law to bring criminal charges," said Representative Rick Renzi, Republican of Arizona.
Democratic members of the committee, while generally praising the role the press plays informing citizens in a democracy, responded only indirectly to the comments concerning The Times. Representative Jane Harman, Democrat of California, said she was disturbed by Mr. Gonzales's statements. "If anyone here wants to imprison journalists," she said, "I invite them to spend some time in China, Cuba or North Korea and see whether they feel safer."
Nice segue into a non-sequitor.
Several lawmakers in both parties said that too much information is classified and that the disclosure of classified information to the press is commonplace.
Ms. Harman expressed concern about a pending espionage prosecution of two former lobbyists for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee for receiving and passing along classified information. The legal theory used against the lobbyists, Ms. Harman said, could be used to apply not only to routine news reporting by journalists but also to discussion of published information by newspaper readers.
The law professors and journalists who appeared as witnesses had starkly divergent views of the recent disclosures in the press. "We may be living in the golden age of journalism," said Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University, who described the revelations as an important public service.
Gabriel Schoenfeld, an editor at Commentary magazine, said the disclosure of the N.S.A. program was a flat violation of a 1950 espionage law. "It compromised a program that allowed us to find al Qaeda terrorists," Mr. Schoenfeld said.
Editors of The Times have disputed that contention, saying the paper published the articles after thorough reporting and careful consultation with the administration. But Mr. Hoekstra said that information about The Times's internal decision-making has not yet been made public. Addressing the witnesses who said they applauded the paper's decision to publish the N.S.A. articles, Mr. Hoekstra said, "You might reach a different conclusion as to whether they actually handled it well" if the paper made additional information available.
Representative Mike Rogers, Republican of Michigan, said The Times and other news organizations should not be allowed to decide for themselves what classified information may be published. "Why should a for-profit corporation be the sole arbiter of what is or is not in the public interest?" he asked.
In an interview, Mr. Freeman said the First Amendment contemplates an independent role for the press. "Allowing government to punish the press for publishing information it legally obtains," he said, "would be an awful and destructive break with tradition."
But publishing classified information is by definition, illegal.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
05/27/2006 01:25 ||
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What part of "classified" and "illegally obtained" do the press and their defenders not understand? A lot of them are lawyers so they understand the law quite well. Being the "press" or a "journalist" is not a defense because it's not a first amendment issue by any stretch of the imigination.
The greatest threat we face is the danger of terrorists armed with weapons of mass destruction. To confront this danger, we launched the Proliferation Security Initiative, a coalition of more than 70 nations that are working together to stop shipments of weapons of mass destruction on land, at sea, and in the air, and to stop them from falling into terrorist hands. And building on the legacy of Harry Truman, we launched the most dramatic transformation of the NATO Alliance since its founding in 1949. Working with allies, we created a new "NATO Response Force" that will allow NATO to deploy rapid reaction forces on short notice anywhere in the world. And together we transformed NATO from a defensive alliance focused on protecting Europe from Soviet tank invasion into a dynamic alliance that is now operating across the world in the support of democracy and peace.
For five decades, NATO forces never deployed outside of Europe. Today, NATO is leading security operations in Afghanistan, training Iraqi security forces in Baghdad, delivering humanitarian relief to earthquake victims in Pakistan, and training peacekeepers in Sudan. An alliance some said had lost its purpose after the Cold War is now meeting the challenges of the 21st century.
In this new war, we're positioning our forces to meet new threats. For more than half a century, American forces essentially had remained in the same places that President Truman deployed them. So, two years ago, I announced the largest transformation of our global force posture since the start of the Cold War. Over the coming decade, we will move U.S. forces from Cold War garrisons in Europe and Asia, and reposition them so they can surge quickly to trouble spots anywhere. We will deploy advanced military capabilities that will increase U.S. combat power across the world, while bringing home between 60,000 and 70,000 troops now stationed overseas. By taking these steps, we will reduce stress on our military families, raise the pressure on our enemies, and ensure that when you put on the uniform of the United States Army you are ready to meet any threat. More at link
#1
President Truman made clear that the Cold War was an ideological struggle between tyranny and freedom. And he issued a presidential directive called NSC-68, which declared that America faced an enemy "animated by a new fanatic faith" and determined to impose its ideology on the entire world.
The enemies we face today are different in many ways from the enemy we faced in the Cold War. In the Cold War, we deterred Soviet aggression through a policy of mutually assured destruction. Unlike the Soviet Union, the terrorist enemies we face today hide in caves and shadows -- and emerge to attack free nations from within. The terrorists have no borders to protect, or capital to defend. They cannot be deterred -- but they will be defeated. (Applause.) America will fight the terrorists on every battlefront, and we will not rest until this threat to our country has been removed. (Applause.)
While there are real differences between today's war and the Cold War, there are also many important similarities. Like the Cold War, we are fighting the followers of a murderous ideology that despises freedom, crushes all dissent, has territorial ambitions, and pursues totalitarian aims. Like the Cold War, our enemies are dismissive of free peoples, claiming that men and women who live in liberty are weak and lack the resolve to defend our way of life. Like the Cold War, our enemies believe that the innocent can be murdered to serve a political vision. And like the Cold War, they're seeking weapons of mass murder that would allow them to deliver catastrophic destruction to our country. If our enemies succeed in acquiring such weapons, they will not hesitate to use them, which means they would pose a threat to America as great as the Soviet Union.
In this new war, we have set a clear doctrine. After the attacks of September the 11th, I told a joint session of Congress: America makes no distinction between the terrorists and the countries that harbor them. If you harbor a terrorist, you are just as guilty as the terrorists and you're an enemy of the United States of America. (Applause.) In the months that followed, I also made clear the principles that will guide us in this new war: America will not wait to be attacked again. We will confront threats before they fully materialize. We will stay on the offense against the terrorists, fighting them abroad so we do not have to face them here at home. (Applause.)
The greatest threat we face is the danger of terrorists armed with weapons of mass destruction. To confront this danger, we launched the Proliferation Security Initiative, a coalition of more than 70 nations that are working together to stop shipments of weapons of mass destruction on land, at sea, and in the air, and to stop them from falling into terrorist hands.
Plus reorganization of Intelligence, FBI, Armed Forces. And I hope this Prolification Security Initiative has something in train for Iran... soon.
It is a "fourth-generation war" that the United States finds itself engaged in since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center in New York, a war without borders or a battlefront. "Transnational" is the word Vice Adm. David C. Nichols Jr. uses to describe President Bush's war on terror.
Nichols is deputy commander of U.S. Central Command in Tampa, Fla., which controls military strategy for Operation Enduring Freedom in Iraq and the wider war against terrorism and those who seek to advance it. Nichols is second in command to Army Gen. John Abizaid, who oversees the entire operation of CENTCOM, as it is known.
Nichols, a Knoxville native and graduate of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, was visiting McGhee Tyson Air National Guard Base Friday under security precautions that rival those of a presidential visit. At a morning briefing, Nichols talked about the new face of war, calling it a "clash of ideology" as opposed to a "conflict between nations."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
05/27/2006 01:11 ||
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0th generation warfare, i.e. Gengis Khan, is the future.
Posted by: ed ||
05/27/2006 2:17 Comments ||
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ed,
You mean with things like pyramids of skulls piled at the city gate and such? If so, we might be on the side of the skulls, since our enemy specializes in head-chopping.
#3
The reason for the skulls was because there was no one left alive within the walls of the city, not because heads were separated. They were usually collected up years later from the rotted remains that were the sole inhabitants of the empty abodes.
#4
"Self-generating action groups" - what in the 1980's I also labeled as independent, multi-tasked, high-mobility battle groups/task forces.
National syndicated talkradio host DOUG STEPHEN, in his responses to discusssions wid call-in radio listeners, agreed wid once caller about how Amer politicians for the most part are wilfully ignoring and snubbing their noses at the Amer people, and doing so while proceeding in favor of a LT agenda whereupon both Mexico and Canada will become part of the USA, what Stephen labeled the future "UNITED STATES OF NORTH AMERICA", IFF NOT THE ENTIRE AMERICAS. Stephen's show implied that Amer cultural-economic superiority is slowly but surely taking over the landscape of Mexico, Canada, and the lower Americas. Stephen told one call-in that, directly or indirectly, in his opinion Mexico may become part of the USA within 40 years, and Canada in approxi 100 years. AS SAID TIMES BEFORE, THE STATUS QUO FOR AMERICA'S ENEMIES, TO INCLUDE "MANAGED COMPETITION" BETWEEN AMER AAND ITS COLD WAR COMMUNIST OR OTHER COMPETITORS, NO LONGER SUFFICES REGARDLESS OF WHAT THE DIPLOMATS OR MSM SAY TO THE CONTRARY. THE GWOT IS A WAR FOR CONTROL OF THE WORLD AND FUTURE OWG, AND WHAT -ISMS WILL DOMINATE SAID WORLD AND OWG. America and the West/Western DemoCapitalism either win and rule, or be destroyed. RUNNING AWAY TO TAHITI, THE NORTH POLE, SHANGRI-LA, ETAL. ISN'T GOING TO SAVE AMERICA OR ITS ENEMIES OR ANYONE FROM THE INEVITABLE - STAND AND FIGHT, OR THE USA-WEST DIES!
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) - An Indiana truck driver was sentenced Friday to more than 13 years in prison for what prosecutors said was a plot to sell U.S. intelligence secrets to Saddam Hussein's Iraqi regime. "I am not a bad man," Shaaban Hafiz Ahmad Ali Shaaban told U.S. District Court Judge John D. Tinder during his sentencing hearing.
Yes you are!
Assistant U.S. Attorney Sharon Jackson said Shaaban was putting up a front in maintaining his innocence. "This defendant is a man without a conscience. Mr. Shaaban has no allegiance to this country," she said. "He acquires and discards citizenship like some people acquire and discard shoes."
A jury in January convicted Shaaban, 54, on six charges, including acting as an unregistered foreign agent and violating sanctions against Iraq. Prosecutors said Shaaban, who is Palestinian, traveled to Baghdad in late 2002 and agreed to sell U.S. intelligence secrets to Iraq for $3 million.
Shaaban, who represented himself during his 11-day trial, argued that he was mistaken for a dead twin brother who worked for the Central Intelligence Agency.
The dead identical twin brother defense, as seen on Matlock, Perry Mason, L.A. Law, and Barnaby Jones.
Shaaban said he was on a mission for the CIA when he traveled to the Middle East in late 2002, but maintains he never entered Iraq because he was detained by Syrian authorities.
During the trial, a former high-ranking Iraqi intelligence official identified Shaaban as the man who offered to sell him the names of U.S. agents in the country. Prosecutors never alleged that Shaaban had names to sell. FBI agents who raided his house said they found computer files praising Hussein and an unsigned contract proposing to recruit "human shields" to protect Iraq from the U.S. invasion. Authorities said he had seven passports.
Besides his 160-month sentence, Shaaban will lose his naturalization status. It was unclear where he would be deported after his jail term.
Why don't we clear that up? Out with him!
Posted by: Steve White ||
05/27/2006 00:00 ||
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Shaaban Hafiz Ahmad Ali Shaaban "I am not a bad man"
#2
...an unsigned contract proposing to recruit "human shields" to protect Iraq from the U.S. invasion...
Wouldn't it be loverly if he had lined up a bunch of suckers who would now be known as utter dupes? Or, that is, more utter dupes than they are currently known.
This story brought a tear to my eye. We have people like the sargeant and the student in our country ...
SYRACUSE, N.Y. (AP) - A soldier said he was only showing his gratitude when gave his Purple Heart to a 13-year-old student being honored for winning a contest for writing letters to American troops. "It's important what these children do for us in sending these letters," said Staff Sgt. Phillip Trackey, after giving away the medal he received for injuries in Iraq. "The letters mean so much to us. So I thought this was a big way of giving something back to them."
Trackey and a group of fellow Fort Drum soldiers were attending a ceremony Thursday at West Genesee Middle School for seventh-grader Fatima Faisal, of Camillus, who was being honored as a regional winner in the Veteran's of Foreign Wars' Letters to the Front contest.
After Faisal received her prizes, Trackey stood and held up his Purple Heart for everyone to see. Then, he pinned it on the girl's blouse.
Fatima said she didn't know what to say or do. "I'm touched. I'm speechless," Fatima said. "This is the sweetest thing ever."
Faisal's letter was chosen the best out of more than 300 letters written in the age 12-18 category in the Central New York region. The national contest was to write letters to servicemen and servicewomen starting with the line, "Dear Service Member, I just wanted to say thanks for ..."
Teacher Donna Mahar said she has her seventh-grade classes participate in the yearly contest. About 60 of her pupils wrote letters, she said. In her letter, Faisal said, "...I give you great respect because you had a choice to join the military and because of your bravery and courage you decided to join."
For winning the contest, Faisal received a T-shirt, a certificate and a $50 savings bond. But the Purple Heart was the top prize, Faisal said, adding she hoped to mount it in a frame to hang in her room. "When he gave it to her, I was getting chills," said Nadia Faisal, Fatima's mother. "I told her 'Oh my gosh, Fatima. You should treasure it forever.'"
Trackey, of Glens Falls, said he received the medal for the shoulder and head wounds he suffered when a bomb went off near him in Baghdad in January 2005. Trackey said his Purple Heart was just collecting dust at home.
Posted by: Steve White ||
05/27/2006 00:00 ||
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I'm tearing up too. Nice move on Trackey's part
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/27/2006 0:34 Comments ||
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Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM) urged the president, prime minister, Punjab chief minister and the Punjab governor to stop terrorism by Jammat-e-Islami (JI) activists, otherwise the MQM would be compelled to take action itself. MQM Lahore chapter Incharge Dr Ali Hassan Chaudhry on Friday said that JI activists not only ransacked the Gujranwala Judical Colony party office but also threatened the workers with dire consequences if they tried to promote MQM in Gujranwala.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/27/2006 00:00 ||
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A Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) leader on Friday urged the government to remove the equipment and offices of the United States investigation agencies - Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) - from Chitral within 20 days. Failure to do so, he said, would lead to a countrywide protest movement against their interference.
MNA Maulana Abdul Akbar Chitrali told a press conference here that the local people would not tolerate at any cost US intelligence agencies' offices in the area. Rumours of Osama Bin Laden's presence in Chitral were being spread to justify US intelligence agencies' offices in the area, Chitrali said, adding: "We think that Osama is no more alive and this is just the US propaganda to enter north Pakistan."
Posted by: Fred ||
05/27/2006 00:00 ||
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Hey genius - you can have the open guys or the covert guys. Take your pick.
#2
"We think that Osama is no more alive and this is just the US propaganda to enter north Pakistan."
Listen, I've seen north Pakistan and no one would want to go there unless they had a very good reason. Our guys would rather be home BBQing with the family. As soon as we've cleared out the varmints we'll go home, honest.
TANK: When the Pakistan Armys front line, in their war against terrorism, moved away and the Talibans took control of his home town, Baidar decided that it was time to leave. The government is helpless. The Talibans, not the religious students but militant Taliban, are in complete control there, said the 30 year old Waziristan tribesman. Baidar closed down his medical store in Bazaar at Wana, the main town in South Waziristan, and moved to Tank, just across the boundary in NWFP. The businessmen and the educated people are in real danger of being killed by the Talibans on suspicion of being informers of the America government, said Baidar, who unlike many others, dared to give his name.
Knowing how to read and write presents a danger to the Talibs, doesn't it?
In the words of President Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistan Army has defeated and chased Al- Qaeda out of South Waziristan in all the encounter that took place between late 2003 to early 2005.
And if you can't take Perv's word for it, whose can you take?
Now the focus has switched to North Waziristan, where more than 300 militants have been killed since the middle of 2005. A few of them are the leading members of Al Qaeda, such as an Egyptian wanted for the 1998 bombings of US embassies in East Africa, but most of the 75 or so foreigners killed were from Chechnya or Islamist guerrillas from Central Asia.
Or locals. Don't forget them. Just because there's a leavening of foreigners doesn't mean the locals aren't enthusiastically participating in the festivities. The foreigners are comfy and cozy there because the locals are so simpatico.
In an interview with Avt Khyber TV on May 19, an independent Pashto-language channel, President Musharraf said that the operations against Al-Qaeda have been very successful, but then he contradicted his statement by saying, Extremism and Talibanisation are spreading and now the focus has shifted from terrorism to extremism.
He probably didn't realize he was contradicting himself, since he's maintaining an entirely artificial distinction between the Arab and Chechen al-Qaeda bad boyz and the Talibs, whom he continues to see as a resource to be controlled and used.
If you say there is peace, I would agree with you that there is no trouble but if you ask whether there is any government I would not agree, said a member of the Mehsuds, the other dominant tribe in South Waziristan, who had also moved to NWFP to escape the tyranny of the Talibans. The old social order has vanished from the towns and villages of Waziristan, a region populated by some of the most disobedient tribes on Pakistans side of the Pashtun Belt.
It's a land of holy men and jirgas and the occasional sardar, sometimes working in concert, sometimes — like now — competing with each other. It's an illustration of what happens when you have a government of men, not laws.
As the military campaign has moved towards the north, political assassinations have became common in the south.
Meaning the war's not over, it's just entered a different phase.
Unknown gunmen have started to ambush administrators, pro-government tribal elders and journalists and force them to flee with their families to the settled areas of NWFP. Almost all Malakan (pro-government tribal elders) have left Waziristan, said Baidar.
That'd be the sardars, or whatever the local equivalent is. That leaves the jirgas and the holy men to face off.
A power vacuum has opened the door for militant Muslim clerics, dubbed Pakistani Taliban by the media.
And likely accurately so...
President Musharraf said that they have no single leader, although they may have ties with Mullah Mohammad Omar, the Afghan Taliban chief. Residents say that his men roam around Wana with rocket launchers mounted on the back of their pick-up trucks.
So maybe they should just be called Pashtun Taliban. I doubt there are a lot of Punjabis or Sindhis among them. They're the same guys who're trotting back and forth across the border, staging spring offensives and such.
We have brought peace in Waziristan. We have eliminated excesses, oppression, robberies and drugs from Waziristan, said Omar during a telephonic interview with Reuters.
"We have taken over. We are ruling with an iron fist."
The militants have also opened offices and set up check posts in Wanas main market, to collect fees from vehicles entering the towns. They have also set up a court to conduct summary trials. Executions have become rare since the clerics increased the fine for murders, although a man convicted of killing his son was shot dead in front of a crowd of 150 tribesmen in late March.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/27/2006 00:00 ||
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NEW DELHI - India and Pakistan on Friday agreed to carry out a joint survey of a coastal strip aimed at an early settlement of a long-standing boundary dispute after talks in the Indian capital. The survey of Sir Creek, which links Indias Gujarat state with Pakistans Sindh province, and its adjoining areas is scheduled to be held between November 2006 and March 2007, according to a joint statement issued after the two-day talks.
Technical experts and hydrographers from India and Pakistan would meet in Pakistan in August to work out modalities for the joint survey, the statement said. Both sides agreed on an early settlement on the land boundary in the Sir Creek area and the maritime boundary and to conduct a joint survey of the Sir Creek and adjoining areas and waters, the statement said.
Both sides have been using documents that date back to 1914 to survey the marshland, which is believed to have shifted considerably since. In early 2005, both countries had decided that a new joint survey of Sir Creek would be conducted and used as the basis for negotiations to demarcate the border. But, at a later round of talks in 2005, they failed to agree on the area of land to be surveyed.
Posted by: Steve White ||
05/27/2006 00:00 ||
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In testimony before Congress on Thursday, a leading nuclear expert insisted that contrary to what a Pakistan Foreign Office spokesperson had said, the case against Dr AQ Khan was far from closed and many questions, especially about Iran, remain unanswered. The hearing, held by the subcommittee on international terrorism and non-proliferation, received testimony from, among others, by David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS). The hearing, which mainly featured the AQ Khan network, was hurriedly arranged, not having been on the concerned congressional subcommittees announced schedule, and should be seen as the beginning of a pressure-building process vis-a-vis Pakistan.
The recent Pakistan Foreign Office spokespersons statement that the case against Dr Khan was now closed and all important information had been gathered and shared, was received with surprise in Washington and viewed negatively, with some in the administration and Congress interpreting it as a counter-pressure tactic against the United States.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/27/2006 00:00 ||
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Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki met leading Iraqi cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani on Saturday in one of Iraq's holiest cities and thanked him for promoting unity between Iraq's groups.
The meeting with Sistani, who has emerged as perhaps the most powerful man in Iraq after Saddam Hussein's downfall, in the Shi'ite holy city of Najaf was likely to fuel Sunni Arab fears that Shi'ite Iran was trying to gain influence in Iraq. Mottaki, who had talks with Iraq's new, Shi'ite-led government in Baghdad on Friday, also visited another Shi'ite shrine city, Kerbala.
After meeting Sistani, Mottaki thanked the Shi'ite religious establishment, or Marjaiya, which Sistani heads. "I presented my gratitude to the Marjaiya for working for the unity of the Iraqi people," he told reporters. "This visit (to the holy cities) raises my spirits," he said. His comments were translated into Arabic.
Mottaki's trip to Iraq was the second such visit from Iran since U.S.-led forces overthrew Saddam in 2003.
In a Palestinian refugee camp on the outskirts of Amman, I sat with another jihadi who had just returned from Iraq. Abu Hanin described how he once went with Zarqawi to see insurgents in Anbar province in the insurgent west of Iraq.
"He left a big impact on them. His words would stay hanging in the air even after he left. He was like the prophet when he went to people and talked to them. He doesn't chat and say how are you and all that nonsense. He speaks with authority and wisdom."
He added: "When I first met him, I didn't think that this would be a man who would change history. He says things you and I can say, but he moves people. He captures their hearts."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
05/27/2006 02:06 ||
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Iraq's new government risks being held to ransom by a dissident Shi'ite faction using its local clout in Basra to hobble vital oil exports, Iraqi officials and senior political sources said on Friday.
They warned that the locally powerful Fadhila party was threatening to have members in the oil industry stage a go-slow to halt exports through the key southern oil port if it did not win the concessions it wanted from Baghdad. "Fadhila is in control," a senior Shi'ite political source close to the party said.
Turf wars among Iraq's ruling Shi'ite Islamist parties have long made its second city a confusing battleground for rival militias, leaving the British forces nominally in charge of Basra hoping that the new government can finally impose order.
Instead, the small Fadhila, which controls the governor's office and parts of the local oil industry but which refused to join Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's cabinet, risks turning the tables on Baghdad by turning off its cash lifeline. "He who owns Basra owns the oil reserves. It is the gateway to the Gulf," the Shi'ite political source said. "It's the richest city in the world. It has a strategic position so why would any one give it up?"
The power struggle over Basra's oil goes to the fractious heart of the United Iraqi Alliance, the bloc of Shi'ite Islamist parties that controls a near-majority in parliament and will shape Iraq's future for years, with or without U.S. occupation. "The security problem in Basra, the corruption, the death squads, is all a power struggle between militias and mafia run by parts of the UIA," a senior Iraqi oil official said, warning that factions in Basra could shut down all Iraq's exports.
Maliki's Dawa party, the SCIRI group and followers of cleric Moqtada al-Sadr dominate the Alliance in Baghdad. Fadhila refused to join the government when Maliki took the Oil Ministry from it and handed it to an independent, Hussain al-Shahristani. Shahristani in turn has vowed to centralize control of oil in Baghdad and crack down hard on corruption and oil smuggling, which officials say are endemic in the southern oilfields.
The senior oil official said: "Fadhila are threatening that they want kickbacks. Unless they get kickbacks they could shut down exports. This is a very serious problem and crisis."
Politics in the city have been dominated by bitter disputes over authority and accusations of corruption and organized crime between the governor, Fadhila's Mohammed al-Waeli and its police chief as well as other Shi'ite factions and clerical figures. But the political source said these issues masked a broader agenda that ultimately came down to control of oil. "The real struggle is hidden beneath the politics," he said. "There are local and international battles for Basra. Locally it is between Fadhila and other groups while regionally it is between Iran and other forces, like the British."
"This will affect the oil sector. The Alliance has chosen a person with no experience to be oil minister instead of someone from Fadhila. This has angered the party.
"Fadhila employees will do a minimum of work to satisfy domestic needs of 400,000 to 500,000 barrels a day. As for exports and boosting output, let the ministry deal with that."
Shipping agents said on Friday there was no disruption to oil loadings at Basra.
Basra province is not only vital for Iraq's oil exports but for its domestic fuel requirements, due to its refinery, and for food supply, containing its only port and rich farmland.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
05/27/2006 01:38 ||
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Of course they want kickbacks, and everyone in the world GETS kickbacks. The trick is to arrange the kickbacks within the rule of law and reduce the deadweight loss. Hope they figure it out.
BAGHDAD - A woman marked Saddam Husseins car with the blood of a sheep slaughtered in a welcoming ceremony for him to guide gunmen who opened fire on his convoy in an assassination attempt in 1982, a court heard on Wednesday. Saddams former personal secretary, Abed Hamid, took the stand for the toppled leader in an attempt to justify a crackdown that led to the execution of 148 Shia men and teenagers after the attack in the town of Dujail.
Once one of Saddams most feared aides, Hamid told the court how the plot to kill Saddam unfolded as residents in the town north of Baghdad slaughtered sheep in a traditional sign of welcoming for a man accused of punishing disloyalty with death. Hamids suspicions were aroused when the woman touched the former presidents car with blood from the sheep on her hand, fearing she was marking it for an ambush. I ordered the cars to be switched without the knowledge of the president, he said, adding that five cars in Saddams convoy took fire, including the one with the blood stain. The court was later adjourned to May 29.
Sounds just like how Hitler survived because someone moved von Stauffenberg's briefcase bomb. Just one of those things.
Hamids account of the Dujail attack was followed by more outbursts from Saddam, who still calls himself the president of Iraq despite facing possible death by hanging. Saddam stared down chief judge Raouf Abdel Rahman, a member of the Kurdish ethnic community oppressed by the ousted leader, and said: You elected me.
Standing in a dark suit, Saddam contrasted with the image of him in a military uniform as he personally interrogated terrified Dujail residents after the attempt on his life and told his forces to take them away for more questioning.
Hamid, described by Iraqis as one of Saddams most powerful enforcers, explained how he, Saddam and other officials escaped death in Dujail. While their convoy headed back to helicopters they came under heavy fire from gunmen hiding in an orchard who killed three soldiers. Saddams men discovered a cache of heavy machineguns and rocket-propelled grenades in the area, Hamid said.
Can't say the attackers lacked the courage to try.
Like Saddams co-accused, Hamid linked former war foe Iran to the plot carried out by the Shia Islamist Dawa party of Nuri Al Maliki, the current Iraqi prime minister.
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05/27/2006 00:00 ||
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GENEVA - The economic plight of Palestinians is deteriorating, with only 50 per cent of men and one in nine women of working age in a job, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) said on Friday. Despite a slight improvement in the overall economy in 2005 after a sharp downturn the previous year, poverty and unemployment is getting worse in Gaza and the West Bank, the United Nations agency said in a report.
Four out of 10 Palestinians in the territories under Israeli military occupation or effective border control were living below the international poverty line of $2.10 a day, added the report, drawn up for the ILOs annual conference opening next Wednesday. (The) report ... describes a situation that amounts to a daily affront to human dignity, ILO Director-General Juan Somavia wrote in a foreword.
And they did it all to themselves, didn't they.
International aid to the Palestinian government has been cut since militant group Hamas won power in elections in January. Hamas, sworn to Israels destruction, has refused to bow to international pressure to soften its stand against the Jewish state despite the near collapse of the Palestinian Authority.
Unemployment in the 15-24 age group is 1.6 times the average in the territories. Some 23 per cent of workers are employed in the public sector, severely hit by the aid boycott which prevents the Palestinian Authority meeting its wage commitments in full, the labour body said.
Yep, there's been no planes landing at the Gaza airport since Hamas took over and the people there are out of work. Of course no planes landed there before the takeover, but the people there had jobs, by gum!
The report said the movement of people, goods and services across the borders of the territories had become even more difficult in the second half of 2005 and early 2006, despite the Israeli military pullout from Gaza.
Getting rid of these barriers, together with a viable trade relationship with Israel and the rest of the world, were the most important steps needed to alleviate the social and economic crisis in the Palestinian territories, it added.
Which means, first off, the Paleos have to quit exploding themselves inside Israel, then they have to stop firing rockets, then they have to quit rampaging with guns, ...
Posted by: Steve White ||
05/27/2006 00:00 ||
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Getting rid of these barriers, together with a viable trade relationship with Israel
They had that from Camp David and blew it. Ain't ever going to happen now.
#6
Palestinians have a much higher standard of living than the majority of people on this planet.
A large proportion of the people living in sub-saharan Africa, rural India and rural China simply don't eat as well, are clothed as well, or have the same educational opportunities as the Palestinians.
Posted by: john ||
05/27/2006 8:16 Comments ||
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These people just don't get cause and effect do they?
I could care less about the bloody paleos, what a pathetic group of 'people'.
Posted by: Tony (UK) ||
05/27/2006 15:37 Comments ||
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a viable trade relationship with Israel and the rest of the world
Nobody seems to want their principal export product. Too bad, as (IMO) it could bring huge benefit to certain parts of EUrope.
IRAN President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said European nations should stand by his country in the dispute over its nuclear programme or "suffer damages".
According to an excerpt of an interview with Germany's Der Spiegel news magazine Mr Ahmadinejad also said he still has not decided whether to visit Germany during next month's World Cup soccer tournament. "They are losing their reputation," Mr Ahmadinejad said, referring to European nations that have worked with the United States to hinder Iran's nuclear ambitions.
In the nuclear conflict, the Europeans "should stand on the side of Iran", Der Spiegel quoted him as saying. Otherwise "they will carry the damages from that." He did not elaborate.
But Mr Ahmadinejad added Iran was interested in improving what he called "already good relations" with Europe.
Iran, the world's fourth-largest oil producer, says it has a right to a nuclear program, and denies US accusations it is trying to build an atomic bomb. It says it only wants to enrich uranium to a level suitable for use in nuclear power reactors.
Mr Ahmadinejad, criticised in Europe for anti-Israel remarks in the past, repeated previous statements about doubting whether the Holocaust happened. Six million Jews were killed by the Nazis and their allies in the Holocaust.
"I only accept something as the truth if I am truly convinced of it," he said.
Iran is one of the 32 teams to qualify for the World Cup, and Mr Ahmadinejad said he has not yet made up his mind about attending the tournament.
Some German leaders, including Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, have said he should be allowed to come because Germany wants to be a good host while others said he should not be allowed into Germany for questioning Israel's right to exist.
"My decision depends on a lot of different things," Mr Ahmadinejad said.
Oh, and everytime those buggers play in the World Cup, I will be supporting the other team. And I am *really* looking forward to the US playing them ;)
Posted by: Tony (UK) ||
05/27/2006 17:27 Comments ||
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I expect the Europeans to cave to Iran. The mind set of Neville Chamberlain permeates the leadership of Europe. They will also claim "peace in our time" in their own way. They already are bending over backwards to accomodate Ahmadinejad.
This issue is not the right to peaceful nuclear technology but the non peaceful applications. The press keeps repeating these asertions as if they are true. No one is for limiting peaceful applications or even talking about doing so. The journalists and media will be quite happy when Iran has the bomb I guess.
IRAN has filed a lawsuit against ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein for his regime's 1980s war against Teheran, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said in a joint statement with his Iraqi counterpart. "The two sides, noting the crimes committed by Saddam Hussein's regime in its aggression against the people of Iraq, Iran and Kuwait, confirmed the need to seek justice for that," the statement read.
"To this end the Iranian Republic has passed on to the foreign ministry of Iraq a complaint against Saddam and his agents for examination by the Iraqi High Tribunal", where Saddam already faces charges of crimes against humanity, the statement added.
The document did not list any specific charges Iran wished to bring against Saddam or any of his aides.
VIENNA, Austria (AP) - Iran has turned to Greece to convey messages to the United States regarding its contentious nuclear program and other disputes, officials said Friday. Their comments suggested Tehran might be willing to engage Washington in an effort to thwart momentum toward a U.N. Security Council resolution that could hit Iran with sanctions over its nuclear defiance.
Anything to keep us talking instead of acting.
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack on Wednesday confirmed the existence of "ad-hoc channels ... going back over the past year" that allow Washington and Tehran to speak through third parties. He did not go into specifics. But on Friday, a U.S. official familiar with the contacts named Greece as a conduit, saying the country has already served as a liaison.
Athens refused to officially comment, but a senior government figure told AP his country did not deny such activity. Both he and the U.S. official demanded anonymity in exchange for commenting on the sensitive issue and declined to discuss specifics.
Might as well now, your cover has been blown ...
The U.S. official said Greece has good connections in Iran. The two countries have had good relations for years and have signed numerous agreements in the last two decades ranging from energy to fighting terrorism. Greek Foreign Minister Dora Bakoyannis has met with both Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Tehran's chief Iranian nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, in recent weeks.
Two officials contacted by AP - both based in Vienna and familiar with the Iranian talks - said Greece was not alone in being asked to act as an intermediary over the past two years. The Iranians have made it clear that they want dialogue, and they are using every available means to deliver that message, said a senior diplomat accredited to the International Atomic Energy Agency. The trouble is, the other side is not amenable, the diplomat said.
As it should be. Let the Iranians make the first move and put something on the table.
IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei has denied being asked to mediate after his offer two years ago to do so was rebuffed by the United States. But a U.N. official said ElBaradei has represented the Iranian standpoint to the Americans several times in the past and even mentioned Iran's interest in bilateral talks this week to Rice.
Switzerland has formally represented U.S. diplomatic interests in Iran since the two countries severed ties after Iranian radicals stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979.
Posted by: Steve White ||
05/27/2006 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[6 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
The countdown to Iran is based upon their actions, not words. There is a red-line that they will not be allowed to cross.
Posted by: Captain America ||
05/27/2006 16:35 Comments ||
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#2
El-Baradei has represented Iranian interests since the day he started. As .com would say: Muzzie first
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/27/2006 16:48 Comments ||
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#2
I wouldn't think Bush is all that serious. If he really wanted to pooch this thing, he'd hold bilateral talks. Making a more-than-reasonable offer that you know the other side will refuse is polertiks.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
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Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
KABUL, Afghanistan, May 27 Afghanistan's Parliament on Saturday rejected the president's nominee for chief of the Supreme Court, 
NATOs supreme commander said Thursday a spring offensive by Taliban fighters appears aimed at discouraging US allies taking part in an expanded NATO-led force in southern Afghanistan.
Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM) urged the president, prime minister, Punjab chief minister and the Punjab governor to stop terrorism by Jammat-e-Islami (JI) activists, otherwise the MQM would be compelled to take action itself. MQM Lahore chapter Incharge Dr Ali Hassan Chaudhry on Friday said that JI activists not only ransacked the Gujranwala Judical Colony party office but also threatened the workers with dire consequences if they tried to promote MQM in Gujranwala.
A Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) leader on Friday urged the government to remove the equipment and offices of the United States investigation agencies - Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) - from Chitral within 20 days. Failure to do so, he said, would lead to a countrywide protest movement against their interference. 
TANK: When the Pakistan Armys front line, in their war against terrorism, moved away and the Talibans took control of his home town, Baidar decided that it was time to leave. The government is helpless. The Talibans, not the religious students but militant Taliban, are in complete control there, said the 30 year old Waziristan tribesman. Baidar closed down his medical store in Bazaar at Wana, the main town in South Waziristan, and moved to Tank, just across the boundary in NWFP. The businessmen and the educated people are in real danger of being killed by the Talibans on suspicion of being informers of the America government, said Baidar, who unlike many others, dared to give his name. 
In testimony before Congress on Thursday, a leading nuclear expert insisted that contrary to what a Pakistan Foreign Office spokesperson had said, the case against Dr AQ Khan was far from closed and many questions, especially about Iran, remain unanswered. The hearing, held by the subcommittee on international terrorism and non-proliferation, received testimony from, among others, by David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS). The hearing, which mainly featured the AQ Khan network, was hurriedly arranged, not having been on the concerned congressional subcommittees announced schedule, and should be seen as the beginning of a pressure-building process vis-a-vis Pakistan. 
Iraq's new government risks being held to ransom by a dissident Shi'ite faction using its local clout in Basra to hobble vital oil exports, Iraqi officials and senior political sources said on Friday.
GENEVA - The economic plight of Palestinians is deteriorating, with only 50 per cent of men and one in nine women of working age in a job, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) said on Friday. Despite a slight improvement in the overall economy in 2005 after a sharp downturn the previous year, poverty and unemployment is getting worse in Gaza and the West Bank, the United Nations agency said in a report.
VIENNA, Austria (AP) - Iran has turned to Greece to convey messages to the United States regarding its contentious nuclear program and other disputes, officials said Friday. Their comments suggested Tehran might be willing to engage Washington in an effort to thwart momentum toward a U.N. Security Council resolution that could hit Iran with sanctions over its nuclear defiance.
